Lichen consists of three main bodies which were created and placed in two different locations during the Luleå Biennale in 2020, Luleå Technological University and Storforsen, a white water river just outside the city. Both chosen sites are places of activity where energy and matter are constantly in motion. 

Paraphrasing the stream’s movements and logic, new leads and new ways of thinking are opened up. The stone, the soil, and the forest are on another frequency and have a different, nonacademic, understanding of information. Where the soil already contains layers of history and stories about human past, nature’s levels of movement seem to be inaccessible. In the wintertime, the north of Sweden can appear very still, although it constantly undergoes changes. I see everything just slowing down, taking its time. Underneath the surface it is all in process, always in movement, everything is connected.

The sculpture’s rise from the earth, covered in birch bark. The birch tree is one of the most northern tree forms on earth. It has adjusted to the arctic climate and its bark has been a valuable material for people of the north. The birch tree is a pioneer tree, the first to grow where bare ground has been created through natural causes or by human activities. Like the network of hyphae and fruiting bodies, the language of nature finds its way to the surface, as a metaphor for the metaphysical space between what is seen and what is hidden underneath. This web offers multiple points of contact through branching and nodal connections allowing for energy and material to pass around it in all directions.