Ramp Project - Empathy Object #2

Ramp Project – Empathy Object #2

Wood sculptures 2019
Bass wood, hand carving, linseed oil, paint

Video (Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/p/B3l42x-BE99/

In the book by Astrid Lindgren, Emil I Lönneberga invites the poor and elderly with disabilities from the almshouse and gives them all Christmas food that is in the house. When a person took the last thing on the dish, it was called ”taken tabberas”. Tabelras is a preview of the Latin tabu­la rasa, a painting without writing.

A building without a ramp is like an empty canvas. When I was asked to design a ramp for Almskagården, a jugend house from 1910 by architect Bertel Jung, it was obvious that I would make it from wood. The bass wood figures represent the poor and disabled who are finally able to satisfy their cultural hunger in the exhibition space of the Loviisa city.

Ramps are a new layer in our building heritage that reflects the evolution of human rights. They can also be implemented in old buildings without breaking previous structures. We have already imported electricity into old buildings. We have pulled the water pipes inside and built inner toilets. We have wired our homes to connect the phones, TV and later the internet. Nowadays we understand that no-one can be excluded of common affairs and it is only positive that this thinking is also reflected as ramps on the facades.

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2025 the series of pauper statues exhibited in The Hague, at 1646 Experimental Art Space. Beaded hands had grown on them. All images at Art viewer.

Hand sewn from silk and covered with glass beads is around a wooden leg.
Smiling wood sculpture with fabric hand decorated with beads,
Wooden sculpture, a man with a pole protruding from the center of his lower body. Threaded trough the pole are old European coins of different sizes. A hand sewn from brown silk has descended onto the man's forehead to give its blessing.
Detail of a wooden sculpture, a foot made of textiles and covered with beads.
A wooden sculpture holds a lace bobbin to one ear like an ear trumpet and begs with a hand sewn from textile.