HEATHER

(Available)

SIGNE EMDAL

July 2023
50 x 56 x 15 cm
Icelandic wool, Shetland wool warp

Touch tech

Made with a special Travel Loom

Unique piece
On show at TEFAF NYC, May 2024

/Text by Galerie Maria Wettergren:

Each day during her artist residency in Skagen, the northernmost point of Denmark, Danish textile artist, Signe Emdal, would go for a walk on the wild heath. It’s the month of July, and the heath is covered in pre-bloom heather in magical shades of lilac purple and pink, scattered atop “brown crunchy pillows, as if it were a woolen rug or a fresh lipstick. A comfort for your head, should you feel sleepy and need a nap in the warm summer afternoon,” in the words of the artist. It is also a pillow for the snakes, which live inside the heather bushes, as well as a safe home for bumblebees, with its nectar protecting them from a harmful parasite that has contributed significantly to their decline. Fortunately, this wild and perfumed landscape, so familiar to the artist who has visited it annually since she was seven years old, is protected by the Danish State, to preserve its fauna and flora. Emdal finds it magical, “I always wonder what creatures might appear on my daily walk. The connection here is peaceful, delicate, yet very rough and transformative, not always gentle, but full of life and strong dramatic winds.”