Skyring

<p dir="ltr">Research Background </p><p dir="ltr">Skyring investigates the intersection of Scandinavian matrilineage, contemporary installation practice, and ritual performance. This project builds upon established research into the symbolic significance of circular forms in Norse and Scandinavian culture—as emblems of community, continuity, and cyclical knowledge transmission. The work engages with historical precedents in women's esoteric art practice, particularly the alchemical and symbolic languages developed by artists such as Hilma af Klint and Anna Cassel, who employed geometric abstraction and personal symbolism to challenge patriarchal artistic hierarchies. The project comprises paintings with crystalline surfaces, suspended luminescent objects, polished metal sculptures including a hovering mobius ring, and the performance work Trollkjerring (Troll Queen), which reinterprets Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt through a female-centric lens. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Significance </p><p dir="ltr">This work advances understanding of how contemporary artists mobilize ancestral knowledge systems and matrilineal inheritance within installation and performance contexts. By centering the female perspective in traditionally male-dominated narratives (transforming the Mountain King's hall into the Mountain Queen's domain), the project contributes to feminist reclamations of cultural mythology. The research demonstrates how ritual performance can function as a method of intergenerational knowledge transfer, with family members enacting roles that embed personal biography within larger cultural frameworks. The deployment of reflective, refractive materials creates an environment where meaning multiplies and fragments—echoing Lacanian theories of mirror-stage identity formation while establishing a theatrical space charged with what the work terms "arcane energies" and "remanent dynamism." </p><p dir="ltr">Research Contribution </p><p dir="ltr">Skyring contributes methodologically by modeling how artists can synthesize installation, object-making, and participatory performance to create immersive cosmologies. The work expands vocabularies for discussing material mystification in contemporary art, particularly through its lexicon of "talisman shapes" and enchanted objects. By documenting the transmission of esoteric artistic practices from one generation to the next (symbolized through the daughter emerging into the white circle), the project offers new frameworks for understanding artistic lineage beyond institutional canonization. The research validates alternative knowledge systems—pagan, matriarchal, ritualistic—as legitimate sources for contemporary artistic inquiry, while demonstrating how personal ancestry can ground experimental practice in specific cultural traditions without resorting to nostalgia or appropriation.</p>