SOCIALLY DISTANT, YET ENGAGED

Embroidery, Textile / 45 x 60 cm / Ole Ukena, 2020

Where does something like a body or an identity start and where does it end?  What holds us all together and how on a biological and material level are we in constant exchange with what is around us? Questions like this were being asked in a very different way in the year 2020. That we are somehow all connected, no matter how far away from each other on this planet, all of a sudden became very clear and even somehow threatening as there was no escaping “the others” from the virus. We were also told to keep a safe distance from each other and yet our global village seemed much more interconnected than ever. In this piece, the shapes also stand on their own but at the same time in close relationship with all other elements around them, still in communication with lines exhaling at all times, somehow woven into the same material underneath that connects their individual existence interconnected with a thousand threads as the canvas itself is the stage that any entity holds their own materiality for a brief moment. Yet the very nature of the canvas and the embroidery is thousands of strings connected to each other creating the illusion of individual shapes, nothing more than a magic trick for the mind and yet so clear to see once you stop naming each individual element and focus on the entire work. This is the world we live in and the realization that made us all freeze and stand still for a moment to understand the implications. ⁠