Omphalos-The Navel of the World

In investigating the emotional bond and distance between human and what we commonly call nature, this project doesn't shy away from the relational friction, grief, fear, loneliness and subconscious forces that also are a part of climate change. My own relationship with nature is inspiering, posing the stranges riddles of existance and beauty. Yet the relationship is also deeply disturbed by my inhereted europatriarchal thought system that enables capitalistic narcissism, legitimizes habitual extractivism and continues the disenchantment of nature. My humancenteredness manifests materially but also aesthetically. Of course nothing is one-dimentional; my cultures female legacy offers a profound respect and appreciation for the living world and the sacredness of all land, and my spiritual practices have amazing tools for humility and one-ness. But far from just depicting a paradisical trancendance and harmonious interbeing, I try to aknowledge the fact that interconnection is often experenced the strongest in moments of great distress and physical pain. It's not a glorification of destruciton but a spiritual and relational path of a wounded human on a wounded earth.

In this project I search for a visual and spacial language that places us face to face with the relational questions between us and the beyond human world.

The project is an attempt to rewire the creative impulse and incorporate the fact that we are living in the middle of an ecological crisis. A changed aesthetic vocabulary around the relationality between us and the beyond human world, is a crucial part of a sustainable paradigm. For the arts is might be just as important to address as material sustainability.

I'm influenced by artistic and scientific research, philosophical ideas, wisdome traditions and mystisistic methods that when filtered through my artistic practice functions as an attempt to find an aesthetic of the possibilities and limits of interconnectedness. The aim of the artistic research is not to illustrate ecology, rather it is trying to re-invent and come to terms with my frictional relationship with nature through aesthetical means. Art here functions as something to research with and through, something that can generate new movements or impulses.

Cecilia Roos

Lina Selander

The project is conducted in approximately four to seven different “chapters” during four years of production. For example "Omphalos-The Navel of the World" that look at birth and death, and the limitations of perception. The artistic outcome is presented as visual installations, performance lectures and essays.