MUNTHE ART MODAY: LOTTE LIND
Name: Lotte Lind
Website: lottelind.com
Instagram: @lindlotte
From: Danmark
Profession: Sculptor
Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do
My name is Lotte Lind and I’m an artist. I recently moved from the big city to the countryside to be closer to nature. I work primarily with sculptures and with performative photography through slides and installations. In my sculptures, my materials vary - I work in ceramics, textiles, stone, and steel. In my most recent works, I primarily explore ceramics.
Right now, I primarily work with themes like power structure, ableism, privileges, shame, vulnerability, and care. Especially the power structure between the "normal" and the "non-normal". For me, those topics are a starting point for talking about relationships in society - and how shame and vulnerability play out interactively. Vulnerability is defined, for example, as a weakness - but for me it is a sign of great strength.
I would rather talk about privileges than about gender. It makes more sense, as power lies both within and between the sexes. From my own point of view, it is just as much about mental vulnerability as in the face of the masculine-dominated and competitive society, where it is not accommodated and recognized. Which gives feelings such as shame, inadequacy, anger, and inferiority.
My approach to working with these themes is to go back in history and look at them over time in their historical context - and thus have my own position mapped as: white, cisgender, neurodiverse / mentally vulnerable woman. I work with these topics through bodily and biological metaphors, which become substitute for psychic and interpersonal mechanisms.
Can you explain more about how being a woman has affected your career?
On the one hand, my gender (and otherwise gender minorities) is statistically underpaid, underrepresented, and under-prioritized in the artworld, so there is, of course, a structural impact that cannot be ignored. But what has affected me the most has been hearing from male mentors and professors that my art was too "feminine", too soft, and too vague. I have clearly felt in my own body the stigma surrounding so-called "female" themes. Therefore, I have had to find a strength in the topics I work with and even insist that it is relevant and that my voice and my perspective are important.
Can you name some other female (artist) who inspires you and explain why?
There are lots of women who inspire me - from writers to philosophers and artists.
If I must name a few key points, I would like to highlight:
Author, Rebecca Solnit, who is an important voice in relation to motherhood, oppression, and abuse of women…
Artist, Louise Bourgeois. She is the master of vulnerability and sculpting and she has put personal art on the agenda.
Author, Johanna Hedva, who is a contemporary artist and anti-capitalist. She has an intersectional-feminist voice in the sign of ableism. She thinks the more personal art is - the more universally relevant it becomes.
Author, Inger Christensen. She inspires me both humanly, methodically, and poetically.
What has been the most challenging aspect of being a female artist?
As a girl growing up in the 80s, you learn indirectly and early to be the smoothing, facilitating and the relational care worker. As an adult, these automated ways of being continues, and I think it is important to look at it - both to accommodate those aspects of myself, but at the same time create a voice in society and in working life relationships that challenges the way the world is expressed...
I have worked extensively with these topics in my latest exhibition called "The troublesome nature of care".
What would you like people to notice about your works?
The presence, the slowness, the complexity between the hard and the soft, the intimacy, the craftsmanship, recognition and thereby also reflection.
Each Monday we bring you a fresh interview with a female artist.
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