Portal - Between the legs, backwards and upside down
2019
In an illustration* from 1514 by Hans Baldung Grien, a woman stands on all fours, looking between her legs, backwards and upside down. She is trying to gain “a magical perspective on existence”. The illustration is one of many picturing witches and prostitutes in the 16th century, pictures with a focus on female sexual stimulation, a reviled form of eroticism in its era.
“Portal” is a colourful assemblage of conjoined body parts. The widespread legs form a carnal portal and the act is “the wrong way around” – a symbol of the reversal of the traditional order. The pose is erotic and active, while plaster and paper is timeless, hard, dead materials, far from carnal.
* Hans Baldung Grien’s etching New Year’s Wish with Three Witches, 1514
The Doll - A fine stripe of hair
2019
Dolls are stiff and expressionless, smooth and slightly unsettling in their representation of man. They have thrived for a long time in the horror genre with their eerie look and have often been used as a metaphor for the negative effect of visual stereotypes.
Contrary to dolls, stuffed toys has the attribute of a reassuring effect.
This doll has the attribute of a stuffed animal, with fur covering most of the body. It sits in a backward position, on a bare, cold and slightly withered round of concrete. Concrete which has attributes associated with concepts such as immobility and solidification and has a texture that seems to reject human touch.
It is a barren place and a dolls body with a layer of counterfeit sense of security and luxury. The lack of eyes and ears, with no contact with the outside world and with a glittering jewelry where the genitalia would be, if there was one. A thin strip of human hair descend from the jewelry onto the concrete surface.
Nyfiket Yrvaket - Territorium
2018
Collaboration with Jonathan Dewoon
Light installation for Linköping Municipality/Visit Linköping as a part of the projekt Vinterstad i Ljus/City of Winter in Light 2018
O Death Where is Thy Sting?
2017
Collaboration with Morgan E. Russell
Exhibited at RSA New Contemporaries 2017
Edinburgh
Arches Projects, AIA
Glagow 2016-17
During 2016 and early 2017 I resided in shorter periods at the Laurieston Arches in Glasgow. I had Arch no 11 to use as I pleased, which resulted in two main projects:
- Dimension 11
(Collaborative installation with Morgan E. Russel,
as a part of our project New Flesh)
- The Principle of Internal Rejection
(Collaborative exhibition with ritual designer Viktor Lysell Smålänning)
Dead/Asleep - Fading fleshy forest
2016
Collaboration between Morgan E. Russel and Jennifer Spångerud
The core thematics Jennifer Spångerud and Morgan Russell share are grounded in the physical reaction, fascination and desire in things that provoke humans on a basic neurological level.
This installation represents a dying stage of the two artists collaborative practice. Broken sculptures and withered artworks from previous exhibitions lie surrounding newer pieces, pointing to a limbo where the merged practice must die or evolve.
New Flesh
Collaboration project New Flesh,
exhibition in Garage Space, Barnes Building
Glasgow 2016
One is not born,
but rather becomes
Joint exhibition with Rebecca Lindsmyr
at The Art School 30-31/3 2016
Simone de Beauvoir once expressed that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. Through this quote she argues that femininity does not arise from differences in biology, psychology, or intellect. Rather, femininity is a construction of civilization. Woman is not born fully formed; she is shaped by her upbringing.
Through the title we have excluded the word woman, to expand the concept and also to highlight its possible limitations regarding a likewise fluctuating physical body.
In our artistic practice we unite in the perception of the body as a neither permanent nor definable entity. However, how we aesthetically respond to the body as a subject matter is in direct contrast to each other; the clinical set against the beastly. In this exhibition these two entry points are brought together to generate a conversation between different approaches to the body.
<- Photo by Beejoy Sanjev
The Devil is in the Details
2015
Hittad tränalle (omgjord), med LED-ljus-öga och ett atypiskt könsorgan av vete- och juicepasta. Spegel och podie. Objektet är 18cm hög, 27cm bred, 14cm djup
Found Wooden Bear (changed), with LED-light-eye and an atypical sex organ in wheat paste. Mirror and plinth. The object is 18x27x14cm
Första i en serie av skulpturer som relaterar till könslig ambivalens. De består av leksaksdjur i trä som är omgjorda med slipmaskin och en degliknande rosaaktig pasta för att forma atypiska könsorgan. Djuren står upp-och-ner och tittar sig själva i spegeln, samtidigt som spegeln visar upp de privata delarna inför betraktaren.
Projektets titel är tänkt att åsyfta den uppmärksamhet vi som individer tenderar till att fästa vid detaljer som egentligen inte torde spela någon större roll.
Könets placering som ett uppfläkt sår längs torsons framsida är en referens till myten om människorna som varelser med fyra armar och fyra ben, urmänniskorna, vilka levde två och två men, på grund av Zeus rädsla för deras styrka, klövs mitt itu.
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Sexual ambivalence. Consist of a found toy animal made of wood which is redesigned with a grinder and a dough-like pinkish paste to form an atypical genitalia. Standing up-side-down and watching itself in the mirror, while the mirror reveiling its private parts before the viewer.
The titel is supposed to seek the way we, as individuals, tend to pay too much attention to the details which really should not matter.
The sex's position as a wound along the front, as a ripped torso is a reference to the myth of the priomordial humans as creatures with four arms and four legs who lived two and two but, because of Zeus fear of their strength, were divided.
“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”
Plato - The Symposium
Part two, the horse. Cut along the stomach; wounded genital organ. Exhibited together with the bear as a comment to Johan Tobias Sergel's work The Faun at Östergötlands Museum 2016 during ALKA's interaction with the collection.
The Faun has an explicit exhibitionistic pose and ambivalent sexual organ, and the lite piece that comes out at its back makes you wonder wether it is a cut off tail or something else.