Jeanette Schäring
Interdisciplinary Artist
Colour – Ecology -Textile
Water – Ocean
Sensuous perception
About
I am ViskansDotter — of the river Viskan, born into fibre and colour in Borås and Sjuhäradsbygden, Sweden through generations of women before me who spun and dyed thread and walked along the Viskan.
My grandparents worked in the textile industry, my great-grandmother was a statare, and on my father’s side were weavers and trade in printed silk textiles. I was given my first industrial sewing machine when I was ten. My ancestors came here through migrations, textile labour and industrialisation.
For many years, I researched and spent extended periods in rural villages in different parts of the world: colour, plants, weaving, ecology, poetic language for thread, and in remote landscapes, climbing, glaciers and icefalls. Since first arriving in Aotearoa, New Zealand, in 2001, I have spent periods living between Aotearoa and Sweden, always close to the ocean while in Aotearoa. In 2019, I began freediving there. After two years of study with Māori, learning parts of te reo Māori and cultural protocols, I encountered other complex ways of thinking about fibre, place, collectivity, language and genealogy. It changed how I understood my own history and, in 2021, I returned to Borås.
What is colour? Where does it begin?
Fermentation does not only produce colour; it produces the conditions through which I come to know colour.
Blue is not in the fibre. Maybe we build fibre temples for stingrays to meditate in.
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.
