Anna Ruth↓

About the work

Wooden Cave

So far, I have separated music and painting in my work. But over time, I have a growing desire to explore their connections. I thus intuitively tend to create an environment that allows me to feel physically surrounded by what I am trying to express through my music and images. My aim is to create a natural environment that I can enter and perform singing amidst a large space of an institution. As a painter, I have hitherto created an environment only in the space of a painting, and if it was physical realizations in space, then only in the home environment. In the case of the rooms I lived in, the spaces were often so small that my entire personal territory was filled with a bed. The bed thus became the scene of everything. The heart of the apartment, the house. During a fellowship in Indonesia, I first realized how vulnerable we are during sleep. The first night in Java, I tried to sleep without a mosquito net, in a country where a single sting of a tiny insect can have fatal consequences. A mosquito net in such a country is an absolute must for survival. You cannot afford to leave your body unguarded, it is impossible to fall asleep. The peculiar permeable space in the space solely belonging to the bed means the only safety when night comes. Light, air, sound can go through. Not insects. The fabric is so fine that it feels more like a magic field of protection than anything else.

When I started working on my diploma, I thought of what I called an “elf ikea.” Every time I was forced to start living in a new place, whether during fellowships or when I was moving (many times), it was important for me to arrange my home to express everything that home means to me. When I came to live in another European country, I always needed to get orientated in a new unfamiliar environment. The comfortable island to me was often Ikea. There thus often began a series of slightly obsessive visits to the department store, which always managed to deceive me with fake “homes.” Suddenly I was able to calm down among the clones of households that I partially know from every apartment, either someone else’s or mine. I would try various beds and it felt like home. I watched the other customers flowing naturally through my bedroom, and yet I was intoxicated by a kind of intimacy that seemed very real to me.

My identity and my creative processes have been strongly associated with nature since the beginning. I am fascinated by everything that grows, flourishes, and thrives and lives its own life. For me, nature and the green impenetrability is an archetypal scene for dreams, imagination, and desires. An environment where most of my paintings take place. My Wooden Cave should be an intimate space, a source of renewal of strength, a safe haven where all aspects of my identity can meet and materialize.