Delsjöarna, 2023 Ullgarn på juteväv, 75 x 110 cm. Courtesy: Konstnären, till minne av Mormor.
Eva Linder’s film Everything on Earth Will Perish – Arendt, Noah and the Animals Build a Boat is loosely based on Hannah Arendt’s ideas on human rights and the biblical story of Noah’s Ark. This is the large ark that Noah built according to God’s command, as described in the Book of Genesis. Noah was told to save himself, his family and all the animals of the world from a global flood, the deluge.
The story features in the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Linder’s work asks the existential questions raised by the story of Noah: who should be saved, and who should be left to perish? Who decides? In the film, the Hannah Arendt character has begun to suspect that there won’t be room for everyone in the boat Noah is building. Arendt, the Wolf and the Sheep together confront Noah, who refers to God’s instructions. There is growing concern.
Hättsjön is a lake in Dalecarlia. Eva Linder’s grandmother plant-dyed the wool that Hättsjön is embroidered with in the 1980s. In the 1950s, Linder’s grandfather moved a log barn there across the snow from his village in Nås finnmark. The story of how her great-grandmother and great-grandfather lived a century ago has survived into our time. Here, Linder has made a series of portraits of important geographic places.
Hättsjön, which belongs to the landscape of her childhood and her family, is replenished with water from the bogs in a system of interlinked lakes in Västerdalarna. Before the water in Hättsjön reaches the sea after 400 kilometres, it passes through five waterways. Hättsjön is the first in a series of punchneedle embroideries made in recent years.
Delsjöarna is based on the Delsjö region in Gothenburg, considered to be the city’s water reservoir. The water is led from the Göta älv river through an almost ten kilometre-long tunnel, to Delsjöarna, where it is stored for a month before flowing on to the Lackarebäck water purification plant. Since the river water contains mercury from industrial emissions, the mercury level in the lakes has increased, and the fish can no longer be used for food. The Delsjö nature reserve is also a popular recreation area.
Rya skog is Gothenburg’s first nature reserve. In this small forest near Gothenburg Harbour on Hisingen, there are the remains of a very old, possibly prehistoric, forest. The mighty oaks and a 17th-century fortress wall are signs of earlier activities in this place. Just beyond Rya skog, between the forest and the river, is the geographical centre of Gothenburg. Ryaverket next to Rya skog is the largest sewage plant in the Nordic region.
