The Tick, Van Abbemuseum, 2019. Photo: Kate Cooper, moderator: Olle Lundin

Through autobiographical exorcisms, Josefin Arnell mixes the semi-fictional with the fictional, drawing from personal experiences, fascinations and preoccupations to trace a non-linear imaginary of narrative connections. Breaking out of expectations, Josefin’s work is an interplay of recurrent figures that function at multiple scales, as she delves into emotional bonds as well as biological processes. Her practice speaks of birth and fear, of human needs and anxieties, of absorption and rejection. The artist’s relationship with her mother becomes an image she projects to question womanhood and maternity, while the character of the tick unravels the relation between humans and mother earth. Josefin introduces the creature as a metaphor to disclose the many ways humans fail at living together on this planet, and to problematise how we abuse it, harass it, and make it sick – as a parasite or a toxic friend would: with an unquenchable thirst, slowly but relentlessly, in a persistent state of denial.

Chicks with Ticks, 2018, watercolour and pen

Suck on me harder (rosette). Current solo show, Bloomers in the woods, Stigter Van Doesburg, 2020. Photo: Peter Tijhuis

Current solo show, Bloomers in the woods, Stigter Van Doesburg, 2020. Photo: Peter Tijhuis

A constellation of female figures appears throughout your work. Specifically, in your exhibition Suck on me harder I eat you for starter, there seems to be a demystification of womanhood, a disintegration of the conventionally ‘acceptable’ image of it. At the same time, there’s a prophetic perspective on birthing, an elevation of the woman as the one who gives birth, and a depiction of the mother as the personification of Fear. Can you speak about the link between the power of fear and motherhood?

I keep coming back to the relationship with my mother, who is an alcoholic and has, just like her parents and grandparents, passed over patterns of addiction behaviours to me, fear is one of the most dominant among them. My mother is starring in some of my films, as herself and as a role I define as “mothership” who is more of a projected image I choose to portray her as. I would say that role is someone who is fearless and doing rebellious actions like pissing on a car, singing to her vagina. She is a romanticised badass and is crossing the borders of the image of how a mother “should” behave. When we do it, the actions enforce a feeling of being brave, it's a play and it's a facade which makes it very vulnerable in an empowering way. Along with my mother and different female characters, Fear has become a recurring character herself, she appears in waves of healing. Sometimes they are all together. I think it's a resistance not to fall into only one constructed image of womanhood, but at the same time not being afraid of appearing as only one (or being afraid but doing it anyway) or having the choice to be all of them at the same time.

Yes I like the prophetic perspective on birthing, but also not at all, as it's the most not uncanny thing to do, still completely un-relatable if we have not experienced it. I think it's important to separate the biological instrument of action when giving birth to another living being to the emotional bound of what a maternity can look like in terms of care, shaping and raising another being. At the moment I'm interested in breeding and the genetic manipulation with animal species in relation to human needs. I was supposed to film a horse giving birth the other day and this week an artificial ejaculation of sperm collection and insemination on the same mare that gave birth last week. It's not happening now cos of the corona. The good part is that the mare gets a month of rest before she has to grow another offspring again and hopefully by then it will be safe for me and the stable to go there to film the process. I'm extremely fascinated by these images of a horse coming out from another horse. The actual details of birth is something very present in my work.

For example I wrote a poem collection called the inflatable pool system about the perfect method of giving birth. While for example with my duo collective HellFun in our ongoing season IM IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE it's all about strategies for pimping ones libido and a construction of a fictional surrogate and babycare business.
Then there is also the metaphorical action of being born. In my film Now the time of blossoming arrives / den blomster tid nu kommer my mum is singing a Swedish hymn about the rotten grass that gets born only to then again die to give space for fresh grass when spring arrives.

(Mother) sucking gate, 2019. Photo Maki Ochoa. Courtesy Lily Robert Gallery

Angel lenticular, 2019. Courtesy Lily Robert Gallery. Photo: Maurine Tric

In Gag Reflex, I wanna puke in heaven and Mothership Goes to Brazil the sensitivity and fragility of humans is a central aspect. You also speak about social and bodily trauma, the breaking of the self, the complexities of human understanding, of ingestion and ejection. However, these works are infused with a deep sense of hope, of healing, a feeling of faith in the future. How has this relationship developed in your work?

In my work I use my autobiographical experiences to build fictional or semi fictional narratives. I think fiction is the best remedy for letting us think freely and break out of the expectations of what we think we are supposed to do. To work like this is like exorcism. I can be playful and I can distance myself from the pain and daring to break it apart into something rather fun or pathetic. It's a way not to take myself too seriously. I would like to say that my working process is playful but that's not true cos I'm such an anxious person, meaning it's crucial for me to implement a huge amount of faith and self caring practices to force that playfulness. I'm always following a path of specific meditation or rituals and have always been interested and seeking esotericism and alternative belief systems. My family is not religious at all, I begged to follow my neighbour to church as a kid. If there had been a cult in my teens close by I would have been its target, dissolving myself into the arms of something else.

Grief lenticular, 2019. Courtesy Lily Robert Gallery. Photo: Maurine Tric

Mama Car, video still. Unreleased material

Blood Sisters, video still, 2020, in collaboration with Helen Anna Flanagan

At a time when the balance between the natural world and the impact of humanity is rapidly – and sometimes fatally – shifting, your sculpture The Tick introduces the insect as a huge, mutant, monstrous creature, which is both a carrier of disease and a messenger that comes to us from the Earth. What would learning how to live in a different environment look like? And what would the Tick tell us?

Recently my direction is towards the idea of comparing a mother and child relationship into a much larger scale, our all: mother earth. That large perspective of an abusive relationship between humans and mother is hard to imagine. Last year I made a musical duet Failure is a feeling that exists long before in comes. It’s a family drama playing on power relations between Mother Earth and her son The Tick, where The Tick uses ways of trying to be seen and get love from his mother, but she is in such a pain that she can only be evil. A battle breaks out when The Tick asks his Mother Earth for money, he just wants 50 Euro. I see the tick as a metaphor of failed aspiration of living together on this planet. I think most of us live with more or less anxieties about this. It's easier to blame external obstacles for this cos that requires less confrontation of oneself.

The tick, just like the corona virus right now, is something real, concrete to be freaked out about, it’s no longer any kind of abstract appendix of feeling from a generational shame or whatsoever, it’s a fucking thing that can kill us and destroy the system around us. I believe fear in this situation can only be useful if we empower it into action otherwise it will just end up on the shelf together with internal anxiety and individualism. The centre of the work is much about this: fear.

The tick is a parasite, meaning it's an organism that lives in or on another and takes its nourishment from that other organism. Technically this is extremely gross. Sucking, biting, digging itself into the flesh. Looking at this behaviour it is what humans are doing to the earth. I also think of a toxic friend. A person acting like a parasite, someone that doesn’t know borders or refuses to be rejected, it starts with a nibble and then they just keep sucking. It's a bit like a vampire, but the difference is that the vampires desire blood, drink what they need and then leave whenever they kill the target or not with cool bite marks. The parasite comes to suck but then they just stay cos the process is much slower and even if you manage to get rid of it, it has left saliva inside of you and the traces of bacterias can either make u directly sick or later pop up camouflaged as other diseases, harassing you. In that way we are all fucking parasites living in denial.

Hembränt (Moonshine). Mothership goes to Brazil, video still, 2016

Childhood. Mothership goes to Brazil, video still, 2016

Den blomstertid nu kommer (Now the time of blossom arrives), video still, 2018

Sister said to Satan: my diary is too hot for you, duo show with Margaret Haines, Auto Italia, 2018

Den blomstertid nu kommer (Now the time of blossoming arrives)
02:00 min, 2019

Mothership, aka Josefin´s mother, shoots beer cans while singing Den blomstertid nu kommer (Now the time of blossoming arrives), a popular Swedish hymn enchanting the forthcoming summer times.

Mothership goes to Brazil
27:32, 2016

From a Swedish burned down forest Josefin brings Mothership (her own mother) to the spiritual town Abadiania, Brazil to meet John of God, one of the most famous healers in the world. But when they arrive, John of God has been hospitalised. A mother daughter relation, infected by alcoholism, codependency and love. Mother: Pia Arnell

Gag Reflex / I wanna puke in heaven
10:45 min, 2016

3 teenagers laugh to produce endorphins - the brain’s ”feel-good” chemicals - while throwing up their binge eating until there's is nothing left. Affirmations inspired by the self help book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. With: Sophie Serber, Pedro Herrero Ferran, Vita Evangelista.

courtesy JOSEFIN ARNELL

@josefinarnell

interview VERONICA GISONDI

@ghinnet

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