003 → Vetrprojekt
The legacy of monstrosity in constructing contemporary (trans)femininity has been generative in the work of (trans)feminist scholars like Stryker and Preciado. The contours of gendered monstrosities have largely been representative of the contours of gendered hierarchies in a given sociohistorical context, with cultural specificities regarding religion, artmaking, and the natural world producing monstrous women as much as the gendered anxiety of the men around them.
Vetrprojekt aims to outline a new monster, the bjornsdottr, within the context of winter’s arrival in her valley. The boundaries of the valley are literally defined by the body of the bestemor bergtroll, the great-grandmother of the mountain/rock trolls that recur in mythology and folklore, lying beneath the mountains to one side. As the sloth of bears residing nearby begin to hibernate, their minds intermingle to collectively dream the bjornsdottr into existence, a woman produced from their consciousness. She is as bears imagine humans to be: always cold, obsessed with construction, and forever in search of love and connection. There she sits on the mountain, watching the village below with only snow and the pelt of the eldest she-bear, who sacrificed herself that it might warm her.
Told through lithographs and text in the vein of Kittelsen and Beskow, her story will interrogate love, womanhood, and relationships to the natural world.
When next you pass a mountain range or ridge of hills in winter and spot a cave mouth high above the road, watching towns and people below, know that the bjornsdottr reigns inside. Yet beware if you seek her company; she can still choose to be a bear.