Sweden’s 2013 summer was long and cool. The roads smooth and traffic light. I rode grateful for the sunshine. Only once or twice did it rain on me during my entire trip. My chosen path was a straight direction up Sweden’s innards.
Cycling every day for days and days gives a person loads of time to think. I let the questions swirl around in my mind. Who am I at my core? What makes me really happy in life? What kind of work do I want to pursue in the future?
This question was pushed to the forefront only two weeks after I started my ride. XYZ, a high tech company, sent me an email. They wanted to fly me in for another interview.
XYZ had been a client of ours at my old company and upon leaning that I was leaving, Mr. CTO said he was interested in hiring me. They wanted to completely redo their external affairs. At the time, I put the idea on the back burner, because I was really not interested in lobby work again. Furthermore, I was not interested in working for a large corporation again. I had done that once before and hated the layers of bureaucracy and formality. I knew myself enough to know that my skills and personality were best set into motion where I could work in an entrepnurenual framework. Most importantly of all, I wanted to work for and with sincere, honest people and for goals which had a positive effect on those around me. I was by now in touch with myself enough to know that money didn’t bring me any fulfillment. People did.
Work and academics had always come easy to me. Fresh out of college, I got the first job I ever applied for. When I quit that one, just weeks later I was offered another, higher paying position. I felt rock-solid in me when it came to “work”. The invitation was nevertheless a great compliment. But “work” wasn’t the Baustelle I was trying to fix.
I focused on pushing my puny, pedaling legs, and reflected more on a vision for my life in the future.
“I studied fine art and I know sculpture, I know make up, I know design. I worked 18 years in make up; in cinema and theater, television. Some of this hair I buy it from the hairpiece shopping and some of it I cut it from my grandmother and mother-in-law. I think that hair has a special character. If you wake up and have a bad feeling you look at yourself in the mirror – you think – “Oh shit, my hair.” When you are a good man or a good woman, or an aggressive man or an aggressive woman, kind etc. your hair becomes like you. I can’t use human skin or human eyes for painting but I can use hair.”
I use gold and silver for modern war. I want to show modern war and modern damage and modern psychological trauma but you can’t talk about these things with red, with yellow. They have traditional meanings, red, yellow and black.
My exhibition is not about the war in Iran or for Iran. It is about anyone in the world because we are all humans. Why do we do war? Why? For what? For money? For country? For earth? For oil? Why?
This is like a mother. “The Mother” is not a man or a woman, I don’t know, just human. And he or she wants to care for his or her baby. But this human is in another bigger human. Its a form, in form, in form.
I want to show my imagination about the starting of the war. When humans catch horses and put horseshoes on them, it starts big wars. I know, horses are very kind animals but we change the original character. The first war machine was a horse.
The crisis means, I think it is simple, everything – when you talk about the war – or we see the war, our mind is going to be in a crisis. Its not about the people in the war. It is about now about me, about you, about any people thinking humanity. Many people can’t think about anything, because all the time they are working, sleeping, sex, food, baby. When they see art they can think. Its very important. If anybody is thinking about meaning about life, maybe the world will change. Maybe. I don’t know.
OXLAEY