Emma Nygren

Autumn 2019: I want to, I must make red spheres! Made of red spheres.
Live with red spheres.

I have realized (by chance?) that the spheres have been beside me in the periphery for a long time, but it was only recently that I became aware of their presence. The spheres are a kind of being, a phenomenon, a source of power. Something that exists and that I can partake in, something that guides and inspires me. The spheres exist in me. They glow, rumble, grow, bubble, manifest, and destroy. I just must, I want to follow them.

I paint you. On paper, canvases, wooden boards, fabric. I paint you on the wall, on my body. I try to pull you out, shape you with my hands. I make small miniatures of you: in plaster, paraffin, straws, matchsticks, steel, tin. First small, so I can carry you with me. Then bigger. But never big enough. Never enough of you.

I explore. I let you move me back in time, take on different bodies, listen to other people’s stories. I let you avenge my own. I want (more than anything?) to enter you. Be surrounded by the red. The safety. Let my body become one with your body. With your help, I let myself play, be consumed, dissolve.

I’ve started seeing you everywhere (and started getting others to see you everywhere, hehe) and I have more and more realized that I am far from alone in seeing you. Of course! We are many who have felt your power, who have understood that you are important to follow. We are a company, an army. Sometimes I try to make the connection between us clearer, but I also know that we are all already connected. Through you.

I believe in such things, in invisible connections, in what binds us together. I believe in not understanding at all but still knowing. Regarding my art, I once wrote that almost everything was painful before I found you. Before I saw that you were there around me. I hold on to that, just as I hold on to you. That you are the only thing I do not doubt.

Image: Emma Nygren

Image: Emma Nygren

Image: Emma Nygren

Image: Emma Nygren