Tales of Transformation consists of 13 photographic light paintings that explore the concept of actively displacing a selection of iconic Norwegian myths and folktales in an Australian landscape. The project was initially conceived as an exploration of traditional and emerging cultural patterns, cultural identity, and attempts of re-framing ideas of ‘home’. However, what emerged was a body of work that engaged with contemporary socio-political debates around gender representation in mythology and folklore. Departing from the traditional the tales have been restructured and reinvented. This has been shaped by my memories of them, my current understanding of them as a feminist artist, and the ways in which they have been influenced by the experience of being a Norwegian living in Australia.
Entangled in unfamiliar landscapes, and without the context of national romanticism, the images represent staged, performative feminist interventions that aim to unsettle the traditional and offer new perspectives on cultural constructs. The act of translation, be it of language or symbols, entails a loss of some sort; loss often followed by transformation, rebirth, or re-discovery. When mythologised flora and fauna, and other culturally significant elements change or disappear completely in a new environment, what remains?
The body of work subverts childhood stories, emphasising their theatricality in carefully constructed tableaus that investigates tropes familiar to the Western imagination. Unrestricted by the boundaries of tradition, the work questions long perpetuated myths of naturalised patriarchal discourse, sexist stereotypes, and how men’s violence against women has been inextricably entangled in core cultural narratives.
List of images created for this body of work (as pictured):
"Kornstaur i måneskinn" (Stooks of wheat in moonlight), 2014,
"Reveenka" (The Fox's widow), 2014
"Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon" (Whitebear King Valemon), 2014
"Huldra" (A Tail of Transformation), 2011
"Nøkken" (Sea troll/ Water Spirit), 2013
"Hughr" (Concepts of the pre-Christian soul), 2013
"3 Sitroner" (3 Lemons), Image 1-Triptych, 2013
"Prinsesse" (Princess), Image 2- Triptych, 2013
"Tyrihans", Image 3- Triptych, 2013
"Untitled" (Troll, head 1), 2014
"Untitled" (Troll, head 2), 2014
"Untitled" (Troll, head 3), 2014
- Editions of 10 (landscape images are 103,5 x 68,7 cm and square images are 70 x 70 cm)
Portraits as portraits of other women (working title)
Work started during Covid isolation that plays with adaptation, intertextuality and questions of 'fidelity'. Applying the same costume and make-up to my daughter and myself, I was equally fascinated by our likeness as our differences. Inspired by the various cultural institutions calling for re-creation of artworks in early 2020, I wanted to explore the difference between adapting a painting and adapting a photograph. Did one ask more than the other? I was interested in transitions between media and questions around fidelity, but also in the relationship between our images as mother and daughter, as well how the images function within the cycle of reproductions and remakes. The series is ongoing.
Images are;
Isis as Anne Marie Zilberman’s “Larme d'or” (date unknown), 2020
Self-portrait as Wladislav T. Benda’s “Pintura” (date unknown), 2020
Isis as Wladislav T. Benda’s “Pintura” (date unknown), 2020
Self-portrait as Charlie Engman's "Mom" (date unknown) , 2020
Isis as Charlie Engman's "Mom"(date unknown), 2020
Self-portrait as “self-portrait by Frida Kahlo 1948”, 2020
Isis as “self-portrait by Frida Kahlo 1948”, 2020
Self-portrait as Annie Leibovitz’ “Meryl Streep, New York City, 1981”, 2020
So much of traditional storytelling is done through the portrait. It’s a time capsule of representation. Be it through a more classical approach or as a conceptual work, the portrait as genre is timeless. It speaks to us about what it is like to be human, at any moment in time.
Performing Metamorphosis is the waking dream where the lived and the imagined purposely collide. Reflections on binary opposites woven together to create tension and contradiction between fear and desire, memory and fantasy, the light-hearted and the grotesque.
Fiction and fantasy represent endless possibilities for crossing boundaries and discovering the vulnerable and uncanny within the safety of imagination. From a tradition of seeing the world as paired sets of dualities, monsters and hybrids are born to embody a fear of, and an attraction to, what is partly, or completely, unknown.
If we can dream our dreams into being, perhaps we also (by laws of balance) birth our own nightmares.
Perhaps it is all an illusion.
Despite our struggles and convictions, we are ultimately not the masters of our own minds.
-Dida Sundet, 2009
Down a Rabbit Hole constructs spaces of transition between what is real and what is imaginary. This photographic world inhabits no specific time or place. These photographs are eerie introspective dreamscapes, inspired by fairytales and cinema, presented as staged tableaux.
This body of work explores the imaginary and artifice in photography as a borderland between inner and outer realities, and the ‘theatre of the mind’ as a place of personal escape. It is as much about the contemporary construction of images as it is about the need for escapism and belief in the fantastical and beautifully weird.
As parts of a personal refuge these photographs contain elements of both the familiar and the unknown through fragments of fairytales and dreams reflecting an internal world. They have no real beginning and no definite end. They sit in the transitional space between here and there as a place for imagination, possibilities, and freedom from restrictions of reality.
- Dida Sundet, October, 2008
Sometimes an image just doesn’t quite go in a series, or just needs to do its own thing. Maybe it finds a context or maybe it’s a lone wolf. Either way…
Fuel for Mankind explores the photographic intersection where ‘the real’ is both true and fabricated at the same time. These images are staged dreamscapes, initially captured through the standard ‘’snapshot’ medium of the Polaroid, then scanned, digitally enhanced and finally (re)printed.
The series came to be as a result of a stay at a holiday house, and a trip to the butcher where the produce was packed in brown paper bags with the words Fuel for Mankind printed in red. The images are layered with opposites and juxtapositions, details that all point to things out of order and expose our initial belief in the photograph as a document.
My interest is in the tension created between the document and the staged tableau, between reality and fantasy. The resulting images are hybrids, a fusion of the immediate representation of the Polaroid and the process of digital alteration, a union of imagination and realism.
Fuel for Mankind reflects both a need for proof of reality and a longing for things that can offer temporary escape into daydreams.
I feel certain that the largest part of all photographs ever taken or being taken or to be taken is and will continue to be, portraits. This is not only true, it is also necessary. We are not solitary mammals, like the elephant, the whale and the ape. What is most profoundly felt between us, even if hidden, will reappear in our own portraits of one another.
-Ben Maddow, 1977
I’m interested in exploring relationships both outside and within the portrait. They are as much about the construction, the form and the objectification of images as their emotional content. They represent the fragility and the unseen behind what we present to the world and how we present it.
A kind of tension is formed in presenting dualities and meeting points: open and closed, soft and hard. The creation of simulacra protects the emotional core in the portrait and establishes another layer for silent contemplation… The introverted sensation in the extroverted object. Portraits have this uncanny power in being so charged with the ability to strike an emotional core that sits so deep within us. They can also be such great deceivers in their construction that they give no certain answers and ultimately reflect us back upon ourselves.
The framing and reframing both unify and separate them, representing mind and body, that of which we recognise in ourselves hidden from others and that of which is hidden from us. But they are also subtle reminders that what we see, what was and what we perceive are not necessarily the same.
- Dida Sundet, 2007
Small bodies, big souls.
I used to think of family photography as stale and impersonal, usually with lack of environmental context. But it can be so much more! I believe the best photo sessions comes from when people take the time to pause and connect in the little things that make big sparks. The concept of family to me is purely one of love between people.
