Ola Lewin
Lewin’s work uses the language of recycling to open a reflection on the ongoing dan- ger to animals and the environment. Her symbolic creations, crafted with ancient and familiar manual expertise, are marked as a “memento,” a warning underscored by the use of materials rendered obsolete by technological progress.
I create my objects from old data storage devices. Using the magnetic tapes of old audio cassettes, I crochet objects that communicate in poetic harmony with my personal perception and view of the world. Flying trees, mutated animals, female body parts, or forgotten injustices serve as metaphors for my worldview. We are witnessing a very rapid media and technological development, where one medium after another is replaced and turned into plas- tic waste. When CDs and DVDs sent audio cassettes to the trash, I thought, what should I do with all my treasures, my music, my audio cassettes? By recycling the cassettes, I bring them back into consciousness and awaken them from the forgotten media history with a regretfully long, irretrievable trail of waste.
Used material, technique, support:
I use old audio and video cassettes, collected many when the medium changed to digital formats.
Artwork Description:
“The Hanging Moose, or Talk to Me” is a crocheted work made from audio tape. I create objects that allow a dialogue with the visitor. Moose are exposed to a threefold threat from climate change: rising temperatures, melting ice, changing forest species, which threatens the animals with increasing diseases caused by parasites. In the fu- ture of climate change, it may be difficult to maintain a viable moose population. The object hangs head down, dead, on a Cassia Fistula fruit, which has the ability to bind a large amount of toxins in the body and then drain them through the intestines. An auxiliary metaphor like a straw in times of need.
