In the project Truncated Icosahedron, the artists Inger Bergström and Lotte Nilsson Välimaa continue their artistic collaboration by with once again investigating a specific place and context through concept and materiality.

The artists’ first common experience when embarking on the project was as follows: “We pictured Fiberspace Gallery illuminated a winter evening in the surrounding evening dusk, bright and exposed, bathing in light. An apparently impossible act manifested itself in our heads – the idea of bringing in a monumental construction in the bare room. Like a ship in a bottle. Our thoughts and minds are now busy solving the Gordian knot – where can we find the simple but drastic solution?

The project and exhibition Truncated Icosahedron is part of Fiber Art Sweden’s anniversary program: FAS XX – two decades in the expanded field. Find out more at www.fiberartsweden.nu

OCCUPATION?
IB: Artist
LNV: Artist

WHAT DOES FIBER MEAN TO YOU?
IB: As an artist, I am mostly interested in the textile surface, the fabric’s character and structure as well as what the fabric can be said to represent. For me there is no other material that is so loaded with inherent references.
LNV: To me, it means material and idea, process. Early pre-verbal memories like frozen bedsheets on a clothes line or a wet sock to leap out of.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FIBER OR TEXTILE TECHNIQUE?
IB:The technique I’m constantly returning to is sewing. If it is to sew large pieces of fabric into pieces of sculptural works or more patchwork-like sewing in two-dimensional works.
LNV: I have no favourite technique. Intuition, thought and thread are closely linked. I work idea-based, right now it’s football patterns and pure mathematics – all to try to make it impossible.

WHAT IS YOUR MOST VIVID TEXTILE MEMORY?
IB: When I attended a preparatory art school, our teacher took us to an exhibition at Liljevalchs. It was Ritzi and Peter Jacobi who had taken over the art gallery with monumental, spatial works of, among other things, textile materials. Suddenly it was like I realised that textiles need not be small, demure or decorative.
LNV: Two memories that are connected:
1. When I was peed in my pants and the new white wool socks were so nice and warm, and at the same time it was very embarrassing.
2. I had terrible growing pains as a child. When I lay to bed and moaning, mom would come into the room. She would raise the blanket and carefully lubricate my sore calves, ankles and feet. After a long while she would finally reach for coarse wool socks, putting one on each foot. To then fall asleep to the voices from the kitchen healed in some way.

FIND OUT MORE
www.fiberartsweden.nu/ content/inger-bergström
www.fiberartsweden.nu/content/lotte-nilsson-välimaa