Torubri, Ogbein, Akpo Timi Fa Sise
I grew up with a giant mango tree in the garden. One always had to be ware of worms when one ate fruit from that tree. Every time I eat a mango its like Im eating a small piece of my childhood, a small piece of the past. I am unable to throw away the seed after I have finished eating. I have to take care of the memory, hang it up to dry, archive it.
I like the hairy texture off a dried mango seed. It almost looks animalistic, as if it has lived and then died. I wonder what the mango Ive eaten has experienced. Where has it been.
I strip of the meaty fruit with my own hands and teeth, I consume and digest parts of the material. Something so close and at the same time so global. In November 2013 I traveled to Nigeria. I rode a speedboat trough the rivers of Warri in Delta State. Along the water banks, rows of mango trees stood next to each other, their roots covered in dark crude oil.
For me the trees represent something permanent, something rooted, something that is and has always been. The oil represent something foreign, something new, something intruding.
Linda Karin Larsen (born 1988, Sandnes) is educated at the Oslo Academy of Fine Art and works mainly with installation, photo and video. The shared role of oil is central in many of her works, from the literal nuts and bolts of the oil trade, which are arranged into patters in wall-based installations, to the use of groundnuts as a material, referring to the export industry in Nigeria before the crude oil was discovered. She explores the strange beauty of each individual component, removed from its original context. Her work evades simple critique of the oil industry and its exploitation, and focuses instead on the interconnectedness of current global trading links.
www.lindakarinlarsen.com
