Jeanette Schäring
Interdisciplinary Artist
working with
Ecology – Colour – Textile
Sensuous perception research
About
I am ViskansDotter — of the river Viskan, born into fibre and colour in Borås, through generations of women who spun and dyed thread and walked along the Viskan, where sensuous knowledge of plants, colour, water, fermentation, fibre and food existed within textile labour, migration and industrial production, and its traces exist within collective and geological memory, industrial archives and colonial colours shaped by extraction and circulation
Between 2000–2006, during my BFA and MFA studies at the University of Gothenburg, I carried out long-term research projects in Laos and Thailand focused on indigo fermentation, historical ecological colour processes, and silk — especially Lao silk traditions in remote villages. In 2005, this continued through a Minor Field Studies scholarship via Konstfack.
My first slow indigo fermentation vat was started next to the ocean in Aotearoa, New Zealand, in 2007, shortly later extending into research on blue from woad fermentation. These ecological microbial processes have remained a deep artistic and material research anchor in my work ever since.
I am intrigued by eco-poetic and sensuous states of colour shift, and by entanglements between life, plants, light, microbial worlds, fibres, water, geological time, material and collective memory, where different temporalities and trajectories unfolds.
And I explore colour as a living, relational intelligence, where fibre, material, memory, optics, light, perception and ecology continuously transform in relation across biological and geological processes, and where colour remains in ongoing change. Colour becomes a sensitive indicator of shifting ecological conditions, emerging through relations between fibre, water, light, sediment, microbial life and perception.
Colour is relationship, and colour is held through practices of care, in fermentation, in tending the vat, in ways that existed before petrochemical colour.
The ocean extends these processes as a material and sensorial field where fibre, microbial life, mineral conditions and movement continue to transform, forming shifting biosensorial states and extended conditions of material life, where body, colour, perception and environment continuously reorganise through relation, mutation, instability and change.
Born in Borås, Sweden. Permanent residency in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
I create words for colours that never found a place in the archives.
NEWS – Gibca Extended
ViskansDotter.-TransistorLaB
Sensory and somatic Colour integrate experiences of our existential encounter with the world, bringing us through the breath and the wilderness of our hearts.
My Blog
Colours from plants unfold perception, deepening intricacy, substance, beauty and fragility. The prismatic shift of blue in the ocean, light, depth, time, interconnection, still forming.
My work
I work with artistic research about botanicals and colours as an artistic research material and not as a resource. In my work, I investigate and delve into depth around plants, water, ocean, methods, colonisation and rights related to holistic, Colour, medical, scientific, and ancient knowledge. I try to understand complex processes beyond our current thinking, where I examine plants, seaweed and colours and how they communicate with us in a somatic and intelligent way. Water is fundamental in this work, as element, memory, and co-creator.
In my artistic research work, which is in-depth research about plants, colour and water. The focal point of my artistic endeavours centres on the eco-philosophical, aesthetic and spiritual exploration of Colour and material, biology, water and the intricate dynamics of our delicate ecosystem, which include looking deeply into the colonial colour and textile history with an ecological understanding of our future for change.
