writing

Writing is an integral part of my artistic practice.

Alongside sculpture and spatial work, I use text as a way to stay with unresolved experiences — moments of vulnerability, encounter and not-knowing — and to explore how meaning, belief and care can be shaped over time.

My writing often takes a research-based and ethnological perspective, moving between personal observation, collective conditions and ceremonial thinking.

Selected texts

Baby face in silver, mouth wanting (2016)

Examination of

then / present thoughts

Slowly untwisting my limbs and mind from mainly caring for the carnal creations, what commonly is known as motherhood.

Loving and nurturing (24/7 that motherhood entails) is exciting and exhausting.

The previous ways or ceremony of creating creatively, as an artist, define and change.

What happens when the belief in value and the transformative energy: money versus action, is highlighted and objections are raised to questions within the obvious ranks?

With Motherly things, like making time for love by being present, or clearing/calming the space by cleaning – tasks obvious and most taken for granted.

–

Since I became a mother in 2015 my world became like a miniature doll house as my heart grew and my very apparent my brain shrank.

I most of all noticed the effect of that grey matter that had mass destruct it self away during pregnancy in order to re sculpture my brain and shape new interests.

My creative making since motherhood has mainly been focused in writing and research. Lately on social contexts of various local cultures (questions on the social construction vs constrictions in motherhood within the arts, the artists terms etc).

Generally summoning humanity and behavioural norms.

Social experiments projects fascinates me.

Viewing other angles of a spectrum in whatever context at hand.

Trained to form material into shapes to communicate or create of desire, untrained in most other things. However I trust as always the new special interest will further guide along to next episode of that intense focus that I call work.

In 2016 I started the awakening. The Mother body unfolded and typed in Google

‘does pregnancy change creativity’

‘brain change by motherhood’

‘mother and artist’

and so forth.

As I could only find shared information on the subject by cozy advice, as ‘treat yourself to rest’.

–

In the unfolding I came upon the MRI scan research that had just been published, on pregnancy and the brain by neuroscientist Elseline Hoekzema.

She had taken scans of womens brains prior pregnancy, during pregnancy and two years post birth and the results were brutal.

Massive brain restructure occurred.

It all coldly explained the cutesy excuse for ‘baby brain’

A behaviour of memory loss and explained the social behaviour change to:

‘less focus on other people, more focus on baby’

as it expressed the end result could mean the development of Mother Instinct as the mother easily reading the baby’s signals.

–

Nature’s wiser.

I immediately wrote to her, asking whether they had seen what effect pregnancy could bear over creativity?

Since I had a change in behaviour and had lost my acute sense for focusing on my art practise.

All I wanted to do was still to admire at my child, my greatest creation with wonder.

Pretend to be interested in getting a baby sitter for longer than two hours.

My dyspraxia symptoms had increased during pregnancy.

I became as clumsy as in my childhood years.

–

I read a book on the initial scientific interest on the brain, and with brain maps tried to locate exactly where artistic creativity begins.

Of course it’s not located in one spot.

There were three areas that in cooperation could be the home of the impulse or lust to create.

She wrote back to me.

‘It could be interesting’

but she was already in the works of next MRI research project on post partum depression.

–

I took inspiration from her and developed my interest within my field.

The actual facts, what was I missing, a community?

A platform?

Definitely the economy to keep up with my artist practise.

The read was investigations by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, on gender equalities within the arts.

How artist mothers had less children per capita than the average women.

How artists are in the top educated in the academic field, but are in the brackets of lowest income in Sweden.

At this point, there was something that could be done, an embrace, something we all could benefit from surely?

I thought as I opened my robe to give milk to my child as we laid down and rested.

Bronze, silk (2021)

Tired Mama

The head is small enough to fit in the palm of a hand.

Its weight is held by the softness beneath it.

Tired Mama emerged from a period where care preceded language.

Exhaustion was not dramatic, but constant — a low, persistent pressure carried through the body. The work does not attempt to represent motherhood, nor fatigue as a condition to be overcome. Instead, it attends to the act of holding.

The bronze carries weight, density and endurance.

The silk receives, cushions and remembers.

Together, they form a quiet structure for rest — not as recovery, but as continuation. A moment where the body is allowed to be heavy, where devotion is not heroic but necessary.

The work functions as a small altar: an object for placing care, rather than explaining it.

Mothers in Residence – Research Notes

Mothers in Residence began from a lack — the absence of spaces where artistic practice, care work and economic reality could be held together without hierarchy.

The writing developed alongside the platform moves between observation, conversation and lived experience. It examines how creative work is shaped by interruption, dependency and responsibility, and how continuity can be sustained within conditions that are often structurally fragile.

Rather than proposing solutions, the texts stay with questions of time, value and visibility:

What is allowed to continue?

What is paused?

What is carried quietly in order for something else to exist?

Is there a way to tell our various tales in a safe space?

How does other do it?

Published excerpts and related texts have appeared in Hertha, Kulturtidningen Zenit and Göteborgs-Posten.

journal extracts

Head locket with silver skull (ex voto)

Unresolved

Encounter

One morning in 2007, while studying silversmithing in London, I was on my way to my part-time job at a high-end jewellery shop.

I took the bus from Dalston, slightly disoriented after having spent the night away from home, an odd encounter. With someone I kept running into until I started notice him, and after a while I started to look out for him. Romantic but distant. We never grew closer than that.

As I sat down, trying to clear my head from the lingering effect of the night before, I saw an elderly woman fall while stepping onto the bus.

She quickly stood up again, embarrassed, and sat on a nearby seat, staring down at her leg in shock.

I walked over to ask if she was alright.

That was when I saw that the skin on her shin had been torn open by the metal edge of the step. It had folded back like a pale fan, and deep red blood was pouring out.

I told the driver to stop and call an ambulance. He pulled over. I sat down on the floor and lifted her leg, trying to slow the bleeding while we waited.

We waited a long time, as it turned out, the ambulance got lost. They couldn’t find the bus.

After some time, the police arrived instead, and an officer took over. While I had been holding her leg, the woman and I talked quietly. Before we all got off to change bus, I wrote down my phone number for her, asking her to let me know that she was safe.

She never did.

I got on the next bus almost immediately. That bus drove a block then crashed into a postbox at a street corner somewhere near Tottenham Road. I screamed right out. Everyone turned to look at me. I was standing there, gripping the leather strap above my head, my arms covered in the elderly woman’s dried blood — dark, brownish-red, clotted, jelly-like. We all had to get off the bus, and wait for a new one.

Hence I arrived very late to work. My colleague’s face shifted from irritation to shock as I stood in the doorway, still wearing the same jumper from the day before, my sleeves rolled up, my arms stained reddish brown. I washed them quickly and worked the entire day in that jumper, thinking about the woman constantly — where she was, whether she was alright.

Not knowing the outcome of that brief, acute and intimate encounter stayed with me long after the physical traces had disappeared.

That experience marked the beginning of a long-term inquiry into vulnerability, witnessing and the need to hold what cannot be resolved.

I made an ex voto for her, a silver leg enamelled in red. An interest in ceremonial thinking — gestures that nurture, protect or carry hope without guaranteeing outcome — began there.

Observing events and conditions where care, belief and fragility surface unexpectedly. I continue to explore how form, material and ritual can offer temporary structures for holding what would otherwise remain un-contained.

2009/2010 Mexico

Weddings

At times I have made wedding bands for people I am somewhat connected to, it’s a not a creative endeavour but I try to see it more of a shamanic process.

I make sure to wish well and that the bonding of the band itself is well finished and unnoticeable.

–

I got married once.

My wedding was during a blue moon, some day before new years evening 2009.

It took place on a beach in Los Cabos, Mexico. I hadn’t invited my family there, since it was a quick fix remedy for my then boyfriend’s visa problem in the UK.

And a personal adventure for me.

I had imagined it to be just a fun event. How fun to get married on a beach during a blue moon.

On the flight over from London to New York I felt like the adventurous Fool from the Tarot cards, with a little trunk of my favourite items on my way towards unforeseeable quest accompanied with just a lust for adventure.

But during the flight on a small airplane from New York to Monterrey we flew right through a storm, with thunder and heavy airbumps. I got so frightened and from panic coming on realised how alone I was, everyone was speaking Spanish with each other but I was just a tongue-tied stranger in foreign air.

Clutching my armrest and watching the internal scenario of the rescuers searching to find my body after we had crashed, but only my wedding dress could be found.

I saw it floating through the air like a silk parachute, without a body to save attached to it, to get caught in the top branches on a tree somewhere in the desert between USA and Mexico.

That journey set off a flight freight that lasted for a few years afterwards.

When I finally landed I was very shaken and met up with my boyfriend and husband to be.

He was all smiles and happy, so I pretended I was too.

But doubt from fear of death during that flight had settled infused by doubt for the coming bond, I had gotten in to the feeling that it was just disguised as an adventure.

–

First thing of the wedding morning I clogged the toilet with my nervous stomach, it was highly embarrassing since it was in my to be sister in law’s house.

I only just met them.

My groom to be plunged the toilet free, a promising start to a fun day.

We had attended a beauty salong the day before, where I was offered a wax.

I didn’t want to be a bad sport so I chose the legs.

My sister in law to be was for me to do a Brazilian wax, which I declined with a joke, since I was wearing silk bloomers under my wedding dress, so the all the long pubes would be well hidden.

The joke fell flat to the ground.

The older brother’s beautiful wife wheezed in my ear, that it was indeed strange that a full grown woman with two kids would wanna look like a little girl in between her legs.

Since I grew up in a family with only girls I appreciated the wheeze that showed the confident interval in this family setting.

–

His family had chosen a spot on the beach belonging to a private members club they where pleased to have gotten with, they had chosen the flowers, after consideration of my preference, red roses and lots of delicious food and wine.

We were all gathered on the private beach, just by the sea waves.

The full blue moon had taken over the sky from the warm sun soon after his lovely mother walked me to the spot of the ceremony.

There I rambled some promises of love, respect and freedom.
I can’t remember what I said, I hadn’t quite prepared for the seriousness.

They had also hired a wedding photographer that took beautiful shots of the event. Over hundreds of photographs of an event I performed at, slightly none present.

–

There was a tension during the wedding meal.

It was the first occasion since the divorce of his mother and father, and the first time their new spouses was introduced too.

The new husband played some guitar and sang some Americana music, and I was feeling more and more lightheaded becoming dizzy.

Someone smoked a cigar and I felt sick and left the dinner. In the lovely garden of the club I started throwing up and someone led me to the bathroom, there I was so violently sick I threw up until it was just blood that came up and I fainted by the toilet.

Someone carried me to a car and drove to the hospital. I had an IV put in but was passed out and only remembering shaking heavily from chills and they put four blankets on top of me.

–

I woke up the next day, saw my vintage 40’s silk wedding dress, that probably had functioned as a nightgown back then, on the floor.

On the other side of the room through the foggy sunlight I watched the dark outlines of my new husband sleeping in the wide window seal.

Suddenly I burst out laughing at the absurdity of the evening before. As I laughed out loud I accidentally farted simultaneously, and since my stomach was really out of order I soiled myself there in bed. It was horrid. I was stuck to the IV, weak as a new born kitten and it smelled.

– Darling.. I woke him up with a whisper.

– Yes? He woke up, smiled at me and looked so happy that I was awake.

– I, I pooed myself, can you help me to the bathroom?

And so he did, lifted the IV hanger and took it with us to the bathroom.

Afterwards, when I was done in there.

He had to come in to the horrid fumes of ill health and get me and that polished steel hanger with IV back to bed.

I had been poisoned by something, perhaps some fruit that I ate that had been washed in dirty water for example, the doctor explained, but some toxins where found in my blood.

–

After that we travelled around in Mexico for a month, but as a heavy consumer of fresh orange juice and spices that was just unavoidable I got a stomach ulcer and had to get back to another hospital in extreme agony.

It was a trip of surrender and mindless, unable to think ahead I hadn’t sorted out any travel insurance prior, luckily my father paid some hospital bills and my father in law paid some too.

–

According to the great Sage of I Ching, a wanderer has to rely on the kindess of strangers, and adapt to the culture of the surrounding.

Since I’m from the north of Sweden, I am mostly comfortable with a wider space around me, in landscape as well as between people, we say hello from a distance, we shake hands only to show that we are civil.

Here my new family was so warm and welcoming, but I was cold, ill and uneasy.

I was not prepared for this marriage. A wedding is a ceremony of seriousness and I thought I could jump straight in just to for a try.

I was offering to share my european citizenship, that I had always taken for granted in return for a social experiment and experience I hadn’t given too much thought to.

But I had received a ring and all, that seemed important to me.

A beautiful thing from the 1940’s, yellow gold with three square diamonds. My mother in law’s new husband had won it as a bet from an antique jeweller in a golf tournament.

I kept the ring after the divorce. I would not have changed a thing if I had could.

–

The divorce has a fantastic story to it as an ending.

It took however more time, effort and work than the actual wedding, though not the marriage itself.

–

Wedding bands, 18k gold, 2010

Three riveted dots referencing the Swedish vagabond mark “We Walk On”.

Master thesis

Narrative of Scarring

A Hallmark of Vulnerability

Abstract

This research examines vulnerability as a condition for holding knowledge rather than a sign of weakness or lack.

Through sculptural thinking, material processes, and practices of repair, it investigates how bodies, objects, and sites carry memory, trauma, and time through scars, wear, and erosion.

Damage is approached not as an endpoint but as a transformative state, where rupture enables new structures and meanings to emerge.

Repair is understood as an ethical and aesthetic act that makes care, labour, and history visible rather than concealed. By foregrounding touch, materiality, and sensory experience, the work proposes alternative forms of communication beyond language.

Ultimately, the research revalues scars as hallmarks of survival, recognition, and embodied understanding.

Research Focus

(koncentrerad, tydlig, ansökningsbar)

This research examines vulnerability as a condition for holding knowledge rather than representation. Through sculptural thinking, material processes, and practices of repair, it investigates how bodies and objects carry memory, trauma, and time through scars, wear, and transformation. Repair is approached as an ethical and aesthetic act that makes care, labour, and lived history visible, positioning damage as a generative and meaningful state.

Key Concepts / Working Fields

Identity

Body · Object · Material · Society · Site

Trauma

Experience · Event · Sensation · Erosion · Pain · Breakage · Loss

Making

[Emergency] Creativity · Transmutation · Repair · Re-making

Memory

Mourning · Vulnerability · Time · Senses · Understanding

Communication

Healing · Scar · [Hall]Mark · Reconciliation · Validation

Selected Excerpts

Vulnerability as knowledge

“As vulnerability opposes strength, it also contains the same ability in knowing its opponent. To increase the ability of seeing something fade away and weaken, yet at the same time appreciate its strength in letting itself transform to another state.”

Scars as memory and structure

“A scar implicates a new structure, a break down of old structure and a sense of touch. Yet this new structure is recalled from previous experience; it contains the memory of what it was.”

Repair as ethical and aesthetic practice

“Repair is not restoration to an original state, but a visible acknowledgment of time, care, and effort. The patched tear is worn as a medal, an outcome of a previous event where it once lay bare.”

Objects as carriers of identity and healing

“Objects serve memory in three main ways: they furnish recollection, stimulate remembering, and form records beyond individual experience — entering us through the senses.”

Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery

Royal College of Art, 2009–2011

The full thesis is available as a PDF upon request.

Inquiries: anna@amhedman.com