Feature Artist - ÅSA BOSTRÖM

ÅSA BOSTRÖM

is a Swedish artist living in the woods in the North of Sweden and on the road.

Åsa is a traveller and collector of materials, a writer of poems, fairytales and non-fiction.  She is also a Yoga and writing teacher,  an explorer of comparative religion and a creator of multi-layered, ecology-based artefacts.

Åsa makes mixed media artefacts that merge visual, sculptural and literary art.  The materials she uses are objects, narratives and concepts collected from various aesthetic and spiritual traditions, found on travels and personal pilgrimages.  The result is multi-layered, ecology-based wall pieces and sculptures, shifting between the figurative and the abstract.

"I write poems, prose and fairytales, and combine texts, my own as well as others, with form and visual elements, experimenting with expressions of what text, writing, reading can be.  Text as something more than a two dimensional surface, text as texture and form, and even something to physically interact with and embody.

For me, objects with natural patina, where traces of history are visible, have an inherent beauty, reflecting the rhythms of life, with its full friction and complexity, exposing layers of meaning, knowledge, experience in constant change.  By working with these worn materials, I strive to embrace perfection in imperfection, placing as much value on the process as on the final result."

"As in many spiritual traditions, I consider my work to be something of a window through which the beholder, as well as the art piece itself, is both the seer and the seen.  By expressing what is meaningful to me, I strive to contact the subjective with the common, to give the personal a collective resonance.

My work is both invocative and evocative.  The working process and the artworks themselves function as instruments, concentrating on what I want to cultivate and what I want to let go of.  There is a re-organising process and a further developing of symbols and concepts from several spiritual traditions, and I explore how these elements can be used today, their relevance in a contemporary context."

 Åsa is also involved in a touring exhibition project with her brother Pär entitled DIPTYK in which they explore spirituality through the use of artefacts and icons in the form of prints, sculptures, paintings, drawings, mixed media and assemblage, the collecting of prayers and the screening of
movies in the North of Sweden.

 ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT OF THE ARTIST ÅSA BOSTRÖM