Skogskapellet

Burned oak, aluminium and stones, 2024

Public commission for Tullgatan/Kungsgatan roundabout in Eskilstuna for Eskilstuna municipality.

For Tullgatan roundabout I have created a work that will remind us of the forest and childhood mystery. I wanted to capture the feeling of holiness that sometimes arises in the encounter with the forest. When the self is essentially dissolved to make room for something greater, something outside ourselves. David Thurfjell would call it a “djupupplevelse” (deep experience). The artwork consists of three parts: a wooden sculpture that I burned, which preserves and protects the wood and gives it a matte black surface, an aluminum sculpture depicting a two-year-old boy in life size, and a cairn of stones that is illuminated from below.

I believe that the biggest challenge people in a secularized society face when it comes to environmental destruction is the fact that we have forgotten that nature has a soul. With the artwork I want to give my interpretation of what the soul of the forest could look like. I want to create Tranströmer's glade for the lost and C.S. Lewis's Narnia. The author Kerstin Ekman even thinks that the word nature itself should not be used as it is too general. Instead, we should talk about the lakes, trees, forests and mountains in order to get close to them, respect them and love them. What we do not know we cannot love and what we do not love we cannot cherish, she says.