FANTASIA: Signe Emdal

Emdal’s creative approach could be characterized as nomadic, …searching for symbiotic energies in serene places to create works with an embracing ambience, to paraphrase the artist. For the past seven months, the artist - accompanied by her travel vertical carpet loom, watercolors and a vintage analogue camera - has been moving to new locations where she has explored ancient textile history, cultural history, site-specific colors and childhood memories, in the company of creative communities. Each place has generated one or several works: The Majorcan Ikat tradition was a great source of inspiration for Emdal’s intense Mother of Fire, with its fiery, flaming pattern of blue and orange colors, whereas the Egyptian and Coptic textile heritages influenced Lady Pharaoh and Murex 4ever, with their strong purple nuances symbolic of cultural richness, exchange and wealth. Both Ikat weaving and Coptic textile tradition point towards the Silk Road, with its abundance of trade in textiles, precious items and knowledge, travelling through time and history. Combined, they have had a significant influence on Emdal’s rainbow-like Silky Way. The enigmatic work, Murex 4ever, born from a marriage of Mediterranean culture and the windy, wild landscapes of North Jutland, leads the way to another Skagen work, the poetic Piccolo Pellicano. Like for the former work, Emdal is inspired by a little sea snail, not the Mediterranean Murex snail, which gave its precious purple color to centuries of art since the reign of the Phoenicians, but the Danish marine snail, the Pelicans Foot, emerging from the deep waters of the Northernmost point of Denmark, glistening under the sun on the beach of Skagen. Long after the snail has died, its presence lives on through its shell “…reminding us of eternity and the beauty we can leave behind.”