Masker revner, blomstene vokser (Stitches unravel, flowers grow)
BGE Contemporary Art // Sep 18. - Oct 23. 2024

All photos: Markus Johansson/Bitmap

Elin Reboli Melberg is an artist who balances what is private, and at times brutally honest, with fearless social engagement. Throughout her career, she has explored different techniques, dwelling on that which allows a combination of spontaneous expression with focus and stamina.

Melberg was born in Stavanger (1976) and has a BA in Fine Art from Winchester School of Art, in addition to an MA in Fine Art from Royal College of Art, London. Today she lives and works in Stavanger and Oslo. For the last ten years she has focused on weaving, using plant-dyed and synthetically dyed yarn, new and inherited. She does her own plant-dying, using harvest from the woods and her garden. Several works have been acquired by Nasjonalmuseet, Equinor, Stavanger Kunstmuseum and Haugaland Kunstmuseum. In addition, she has made textile sculptures for the Sami exhibition «Vástádus eana - The Answer is Land», which won the award Kritikerprisen in 2022, and has been on a continuous tour of Europe, Canada and USA since 2021. Melberg refers to artists like Magdalena Abakanowicz and Synnøve Anker Aurdal as her main sources of inspiration, based on their ability to use traditional techniques like weaving to convey deep, personal experiences and political messages.

Melberg started working on this exhibition in autumn of 2023, but after a few months her mother was involved in a serious accident. This marks a clear divide in her production. The shock, as well the hope for a positive outcome while her mother was comatose, comes to life in «Etter før. Før etter» («After before. Before after»). The weave was underway when the accident occurred, and midway the colourful pattern is replaced by white yarn that remains unbattened, weightless and hesitant against the warp. Art has its own language, often more precise than the verbal language, and we can recognise the abrupt transition from everyday life to a total lack of control and predictability. Melberg continuously includes, as previously, her life in her art. Not as calculated effects and setting, but as slow, intuitive and unapologetic traces of an ongoing presence. She describes her time-consuming and repetitive work using tactile materials as a form of earthing. 

Three of the tapestries are based on the MR-scans of her mother’s brain, used by the doctors to explain the seriousness of the injuries. Melberg’s ability to work on what currently needs to be processed is extra evident when the topic is painful or confrontational. These works were created during an intense and secluded period, while her mother’s fate was unknown; the liminal phase. The dark, abstract piece «Så uendelig langt borte» («Eternally far away») as well as the woven tapestry «Våren har hull: Skogen» («The Spring has holes: The Forest») turn in on themselves, in recognition of her mother’s death, while the sculpture «Her er du mindre borte» («You are less away here») stands like an enveloping, but lifeless pillar. The light-coloured textiles were found while tidying her mother’s cupboards and include items varying from promotional T-shirts to unfinished embroideries. Then the floral motif takes over. Melberg writes in her Artist’s book about how she and her mother used to send each other photographs of the first flowers of spring, expecting lighter and warmer days. In the exhibition, the flowers are beautiful, yet serving as markers of the passing of time, thus reminding us of the ever-increasing distance. Nature gains a relentless, comforting and liberating role as it continues unaffected.

But now the spring has holes.

There are holes in the spring.
(Excerpt from Artist’s book, Elin Reboli Melberg, 2024) 

Mona Mørk
Art Historian