Skrud

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SKRUD is a monumental textile installation produced for Jämtland´s County Museum, Östersund, Sweden, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Överhogdal Tapestries in 1910, on display June-October 2010.

The site-specific installation is based on the Överhogdal tapestries, dated to the shift between the Viking Age and the Early Middle Ages. The tapestries, part of the Jamtli Museum collection, were found 1910 in the little village of Överhogdal, situated in Norway until the 16 hundreds.  SKRUD portrays an artistic exploration of narrative, the relationship between cultural and personal memories and different concepts of time. The peice consists of four long weavings of linen with narrative motifs, totally around 40 metres of cloth, which run around the museum walls and frame them. The motives are a mixture of copies of elements found on the Överhogdal tapestries and those on the wall-hangings from Oseberg, Norway 7th Century AD), as well as prehistoric and historical manuscripts from Christian and Islamic traditions. In the middle of the room, thousands of rolled textiles are placed together with pages from my personal diary from the two years of the production process. These represent all the stories that are told, those who are missing, and not yet found, and then those who never will be found. Private and public spheres are here linked together and problematized. References can be made to ancient scrolls, illuminated manuscripts, sacred texts from different cultures, as well as oral and personal narratives that have been transmitted from generation to generation.

 

         Foto: Anna-Karin Pernevill 2010.