In this project I highlight the entanglements of human and environment as they shape each other in the process of becoming. Islandness and archipelagos are explored through material, texture and form. I create palm sized sculptures. Tactile organic forms, like totems, offerings or talismans. They are wrapped in saining symbols, seaweed, or yarn.

My motivation for creating these sculptures can be split into four main areas, firstly, I am inspired by earth, I gather wild clay locally, and the act of gathering and processing the clay is important, involving the physical transformations of, and physical connections to, the islands. I began to think of islands as sea wrapped earth.

Secondly, I am inspired by wrapping as metaphor, and I researched the archaeologists Karina Croucher and Colin Richards findings on wrapping used in Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The skin is the protective wrapping of the body, and tattoos become an extra layer of protection against malevolent outside spiritual forces, at the mouth, ear or any opening where spirits may enter the body. There is a metaphorical ‘wrapping’ of the island in rock art seen at cave entrances, suggesting that landscape may be seen as an extension of the tattooed body. Wrapping takes many forms, we wrap a gift in paper, a child in a blanket, or the dead in a shroud, they are at once protected, concealed, contained, separated, hidden, and revealed. There is an intimacy between the materiality of wrapping and the object being wrapped (Croucher & Richards, 2014: 213).

“Perhaps under such circumstances wrapping may additionally be conceived as an embrace of that concealed” (Croucher and Richards, 2014: 212).

Wrapping in the form of pattern placed upon an object, the body (in this case tattoos), or the landscape (in this case rock art) are all parts of the same whole. These insights into wrapping and pattern as protection connects to saining symbols found on Nordic and Celtic objects such as stones, doorways, lintels of houses, and on Shetland taatit rugs. In the case of the rugs, the wearer is in a protective wrapping as they are vulnerable during sleep. Sleep was a time when spirits like the Mara could enter the body (Christiansen, 2024). In this way, yarn and seaweed can wrap the sculptures as well as drawing saining symbols onto them or burnishing them. The sculptures are intertwining with their environment.

Thirdly, I took inspiration from Rebecca Tamás’ (Born 1988) essay On Greenness, which explores the art of Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) and is rooted in feminine folklore. Tamás likens Mendieta’s work to the philosophy of becoming discussed by Deleuze and Guattari. Humans are in an ongoing state of becoming throughout their lives, driven by society, culture or their environment, involving a breakdown of the previous self to build up another self. Or a multiplicity of selves. Or an animalistic, rhizomatic swarm of selves (Deleuze and Guattari, 2013: 322). Through Mendieta’s work we understand that the ‘natural world’ does not exist outside of us, it is interconnected and entangled within us. Her work is a “sharing with, becoming with, the world of which we are part” (Tamas, 2022: 60).

And lastly, I apply these themes to local folklore. In Shetland there is a history of naming geological features for people, as people are becoming with the land. “Girlsta is named after Geirhildr, daughter of Flóki of the Ravens, tragically drowned in the loch” (Brooke-Freeman, 2020). The folk tale goes that she was then buried on the island in the loch. A woman, wrapped in earth, and water and earth and water. I think about her, has she become island?

References

Brooke-Freeman, E. (2020) Place Names of the Week - Personal names. Shetland Amenity Trust. Available at: https://www.shetlandamenity.org/place-names-of-the-week-personal-names (Accessed: 18th May 2024).

Christiansen, C (2024) Aboot da Nicht: Shetlandic and Nordic Folklore about Darkness and Sleep [lecture]. Shetland Museum and Archives. 21st March.

Croucher, K. & Richards, C. (2014) Wrapped in Images: Body Metaphors, Petroglyphs, and Landscape in the Island World of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Left Coast Press. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/17206068/Wrapped_in_Images_Body_Metaphors_Petroglyphs_and_Landscape_in_the_Island_World_of_Rapa_Nui_Easter_Island_ (Accessed: 27th February 2024).

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2013) A Thousand Plateaus. 4th edn. London: Bloomsbury.

Tamás, R. (2020) Strangers, Essays on the Human and Nonhuman. UK: Makina Books.