PALIMPSESTS 3/3

(re)PAIR

• An uncoordinated child

• As the body broke

• Finding tools and the creation of a foundation

As a kid and young person, I was what one could call unlucky or just really uncoordinated. It could be in all situations, but especially in the exterior world, and especially in formal settings. This could be and repeat itself still at dinner parties, at friend’s houses, especially if they had interiors with a lot of decorations in glass and porcelain. Something electric inside me would make my body’s movements unpredictable, spontaneous and eclectic.

Not long after an incident at a friend’s house where I broke the lamp base of a large and beautiful red porcelain lamp, after an afternoon of baking cookies ornamented with pink coloured glazes, I fell awkwardly from a handstand, while waiting for the cookies to cool down. This happened not long before I started having experiences of swelling accompanied by excruciating pains in certain areas of my body. I was six or seven. The first area where the experience harbored itself was in my right foot. This was followed by swelling and agonizing pain in my right hand not long after. There was no apparent connection between the outer eclectic movements of the body, the breaking of clumsily handling objects in the world, and the inner breaking of my skeleton, at least not at a first glance. Later on, it appeared to me that a certain nervous or anxious disposition might be a common denominator, but that would only come about after years and years of psychoanalytic study and an examination and diagnosis of being neurodivergent, possibly including some dyspraxia and parapraxis.

The ink, as I understand the history of the brand I use, is called Diamine ink. It holds qualities which I have yet to find in any other ink. The brand is an English brand with a family history which goes back to 1864, the year after the birth of my great grandmother, and has been based in Liverpool since 1925. They are also the creators of several ink hues with interesting stories behind them.

This particular ink has held my attention now for almost 25 years, mainly because of the way the colour intensifies and goes from being opaque to retaining a sheen of lacquer, brittle on the surface yet deep as you work with it. Yet, the colour changes over time, like blood. It is bright red as I add the first and second layers, but as the colour absorbs the light through the passing of time, it turns into burnt umber. Old and dried out blood. Or the ground of certain areas in Africa where the soil is red, burnt red, and crackles when dry. Some would call this a sign of poor quality. I experience it as something alive, which can be partly delayed by using museum glass as it is framed, and by avoiding direct sunlight. 

In the latest INK GRID works, which with the help of my dear friend Tue, entitled PALIMPSESTS, I merge ink on paper with or without grids with photographic sketches, snapshot photos, mostly taken through windows, reflecting back a multilayered image of that which is behind the window pane, on the window pane, and behind me, as I take the photograph. 

The combination of elements goes far back, and includes the use of repetition, sewing, stitching, embroidery and gluing. As I began developing these works, and intuitively came to understand a need for repairing and re•pairing, putting together disparate materials in new constellations, at the same time as trying to mend something broken like ripped paper, I began to see a certain blueprint of behavior which had to do with building and constructing, rebuilding and reconstruction, and especially restoration. A line of work, perspective and method, which through the occupations of my parents who both trained and worked as restorative architects, filled all areas of my childhood home.

In my work from which PALIMPSESTS have developed, I found a way to combine elements, in what feels like a graceful and elegant way, which enhances each individual expression of the various elements from which it is produced. To me the element of the present, a moment in time, the added photography upon the thick and scrumptious art paper, painted with colors which hit me right in my gut evoking sensuality, the sensuous, touch and feeling, and which take a long time to complete, found a dialectic in a tension, which I can bear. Sometimes, an artwork that has taken a long time in its naissance and a long time to produce, can suddenly take just a moment to grasp when put together with something else, such as a photographic momentary reflection. To me, what has been my life's work, and as such has nothing to do with art, apart from the art of becoming a subject, is to rebuild an inner foundation from a place of ruins. 

©️ Camilla Howalt