Lovers Avenue

Old books are beautiful. I have bought them for years just because I like how they look but I very rarely actually read them. So to me they were already art. 

I bought them all for almost nothing in charity shops, but they were all specifically chosen for their meaning when I decided what to make in what book. There is 'In Praise of Sweden', a factual book about landscapes and customs. 'Charles Dickens Christmas Books', homely but witty stories for the holidays. 'Madame Bovary', the French novel about a trapped and heartbroken wife. 'Vanity Fair', where the destitute Rebecca flirts her way up the social ladder. 'En Skandal', a Swedish society novel about the "two types of women". 'Red Eve', a knights tale. And 'Anna Karenina', about how a woman who wants too much loses all.

I only used things from the books them selves to tell the stories, things I could find and my memories to illustrate the feeling.

It started as an impulse to make sense of an incomprehensible situation. I started to trace people and experiences from my past and present by focusing on them one by one and since I often describe parts of my life as chapters of books it made sense. I didn't know why I started making them, I just felt I had to. All the while trying to find the answers to why. Why these people? Why now?

Every book is in one way a person I have loved or an experience that has shaped me. But it's not about the people them selves but about my relationship to them. Some more personal than others. 

 It starts all the way back to 2003 when I fell in love for the first time and continues through my love affairs, the rise and fall of my married life and heartbreaks over 15 years. 

None of these are people I've had a normal relationship with. That was almost an unspoken criteria. As if I needed one..

It is all people I have lost. But love doesn't die. And people evolve. Love changes form and remains as the very underpinning of our existence. I would not be who I am without them. And as I put down the last one to let the blood stains dry I understood for what purpose I had made them. It was after all not them. It was parts of me, like puzzle pieces falling into place. 

And in that moment I remembered who I am again.