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In the nature reserve Hågadalen-Nåsten on the outskirts of Uppsala, near where I live, there is a forest area ravaged by fire. I have returned to the place, where there was a fire this summer, several times to try to understand and feel what happens in the forest when it burns, and afterwards. It is easy to imagine the power of the fire, the sound of burning wood, the heat, ash flakes flying. After the fire, it’s quiet, gray, before life picks up a new momentum. Black trunks rise against a fund of sheer greenery. Many species benefit from the new environment: fungi, insects, birds. Some, threatened, depend on forest fire for their survival. The trees will remember the fire, just as they remember previous periods of drought or rainfall, everything can be read in the annual rings. The traces of forest fire on the trunks are called fire scars, the bark slowly closes over the burned area of the trunk to protect it. I have used the place as a starting point in a series of works that in different ways describe my feeling of the forest after the fire.
Front: Stammarna, 2022-23, earthenware. Back: 59°48’47.4”N, 17°34’48.1”E, photography – print on photo rag.
Fur (Fir), 2023. Porcelain.
Fur (Fir), 2023, detail. Porcelain.
Ashes, 2023. Porcelain, nylon string.