Linda Lamignan

Artist statement by Linda Lamignan.

“I am a visual artist whose work tells stories about the experience of floating in between different worlds. Through objects, video, music and performance, I explore notions related to wandering and diaspora, transformation and love. With an animistic approach, I work with materials connected to the industries, histories, living landscapes and cultural relations between West Africa and Scandinavia. I often work in collaboration with friends and family members, fostering the wisdom and the affect inherited from a shared diasporic experience.

The stories I tell through my work are created from my loving relation to the people I’m surrounded by, the living landscapes I and my ancestors belong to and to the elements and symbols that are found in these landscapes. Ancestors on both sides of my family were born into the world surrounded by water, connected to the rivers of Delta State, Nigeria and the islands of Boknafjord, Norway. In contemporary time, crude oil has emerged from the depths of these landscapes and made its mark, politically, historically and industrially.

I seek to step outside the idea of seeing living landscapes and elements as a resource for economic profit and instead understand them as an extension of our own bodies. Where the passage of time unfolds and sources of wisdom, spirit and memory is stored."