Nicole and Linnea invited me to be part of their project STM_gbg, the outdoor extension of their multi-year collaboration Skinning True Mesh. The idea was to take Linnea's sculptural fabric structures out into the Swedish landscape and photograph them: playing with these large, draped constructions against real ground, real weather, real light, with the purpose of exhibiting the results.
We worked along the coast around Gothenburg and the Swedish west coast: rocky shoreline, open water, the particular flat quality of coastal Scandinavian light. The garments are enormous — volumes of draped and constructed fabric that hold their own geometry regardless of what body is inside them. Part of what made the shoot interesting was exactly that tension: these forms that look almost synthetic, almost generated, placed in an environment that is as natural and uncontrolled as it gets.
STM, Skinning True Mesh, began as a film series made with filmmaker Joakim Envik Karlsson in a blank white studio, using movement and textile to create bodies that looked closer to 3D animation than to anything lived-in. The films screened internationally, from Hong Kong to Prague to Berlin. STM_gbg was the question that followed: what happens when you take those same forms outdoors? The resulting photographs were exhibited as part of SKINNING TRUE MESH_collection at Temporary Stabilisations in Gamlestaden, Gothenburg, showing the full arc of the collaboration. Supported by Göteborgs Stad.
