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The opinions expressed on this page are mine alone. Any similarities to the views of my employer are completely coincidental.

Monday, 20 November 2017

Hannah Ryggen at Modern Art Oxford

If you are in town then check out the Hannah Ryggen exhibition at Modern Art Oxford. It's really worth  a couple of hours, not because there is so much to see, just a couple of rooms, but because you need a little time to let the woman's achievement sink in. 

She was a Swedish self-taught tapestry weaver who after marrying a painter moved to a fairly remote part of Norway and lived for most of her life on a pretty primitive but self-sufficient smallholding. There she produced a couple of hundred tapestries, spinning the fibres herself and creating her own dyes from whatever was around - urine, moss, bark and so forth.

Most of her works have overtly political themes - she was a member of the Norwegian Communist Party - like this one celebrating and memorializing Liselotte Hermann  who was executed by the Nazis in 1938.





















Even after the occupation of Norway and the imprisonment of her husband she continued to weave large allegorical  tapestries embodying her political vision.

Be sure to take time to watch the documentary film on show at the exhibition (it has English subtitles unlike the link above). The impression you get is of a woman with a singular vision determined to let whatever is inside her express itself whatever the obstacles.

I rather admire people with  a calm but  assured sense of purpose. There is a real sense in which important things can get done by everyone tending their own garden and rowing with the oars they are given.

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