Linnéa Ryshke

Afield

2022— current

“Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.”
-Rumi

Afield is a multi-media project– consisting of paintings, drawings, sculpture and a forthcoming book of poetry– that center on the agency, vitality and mystery of other animals. The work derives drawings and written documentation of artistic research that I conducted in 2022 at four sites of human-animal interaction in Sweden. The animal subjects of the works are all individuals encountered at the sites, and while the human is not visible in the works, the human gaze is implied. Using ambiguity to evoke the specific quality of each animal’s presence, Afield creates a contemplative space for viewers to engage with questions, rather than answers, about what it means to care for and care about the lives of other animals through proximity and distance. 

A trace

Site 1: Above the arctic circle

This set of works originates from sketches and memories of being with reindeer in Northern Sweden, animals who I came to know through the indigenous Saami reindeer herders who have lived alongside reindeer for hundreds of years. The works honor silence, the sound both natural to the landscape, and the sound of its disappearance.

Description: This sculpture of a severed white birch trunk is made from a found reindeer skin. The bark was created from the inside skin of the reindeer, and the tree rings are from her fur. I consider this piece not something I made, but something that was revealed by the material itself; as the remains of an individual, it was already full of agency and a sense of knowing. Reindeer and white birch trees, two of the first beings to return to Northern Europe after the last ice age, have a mutually beneficial relationship. Yet, it is one that is becoming frayed and disfigured in the context of climate change and the pressures of the logging industry. Reshaping one remains into another, the sculpture suggests the conditions of an absent presence felt in a landscape currently undergoing significant, brutal change.

Description: This artist book begins with the tab that is not painted, and is meant to be read counter-clockwise, which is the direction reindeer move when they are contained in a corral, and also the direction the earth turns. It is a story told in reindeer tracks.