By creative Agent Siri Berqvam (NO)

Siri Berqvams work is about translation. The starting point for her sculptures are everyday items, preferably white goods and packaging that we surround ourselves with.
Washing machines, vacuum cleaners, radios, canned food and eating tools are some of the ingredients in her thematically extensive project. Berqvam has chosen to give these mass-produced things a new common unified language. She sews sculptures; which at first glance represent well-known consumer articles, complete with technical, realistically portrayed details as labels, volume knobs, etc.

Washing machines and canned goods reappear in a new and softer parallel world, whose synthetic nature allows them to point to new references that they are usually not associated with. Fabrics and textures in the sculptures exude softness and intimacy, and therefore evoke easily, associations to children’s lives, surrounded as they are by soft stuffed animals in all imaginable variations. But, as in fairy tales it is a short way from safety to chaos. An atmosphere of unresolved drama, horror and lack of control can certainly occur in such a padded universe.

We find an informal language in the use of materials in Berqvams work. Method and fabrics that are usually intended for toys have now been raised to contemporary art. She often focuses on the decay of our consumer articles when they no longer have utilitarian­ value and are reduced to junk. Useless in our practical life, but – as it turns out – very useful in an artistic context. In her recent work she takes a step further into a fairy tale world where decay and modernity meet insidious forces of nature.