Save As

Johanna Ulfsak’s series of frisbees, Save As are created as a humorous and imaginative look into the history of industrial textile production. Ulfsak has drawn up scenes that in their execution are comical and at times even naïve. This lies in contrast with the subject matter – the large scale and mechanised textile production with its beginnings in the Industrial Revolution in Europe. These scenes also evoke the idyllic images printed on the Toile de Jouy textiles in France in the 18th century. However, instead of seeing imagies of leisure in the countryside, Ulfsak reminds the viewer of the textile workers, the very human element involved in the global and – to this day exploitative – industry. The style of drawing and the woven compositions very clearly indicate the link of the artist’s hand. However, the simple form and the sleek finish of the frisbee act as a reference to industrial mass production. In addition to the series of frisbees, Ulfsak is also exhibiting a mobile sculpture Spiderwoman – a traveller bridging the gap between the flat images of the textile workers and the three-dimensional installations present elsewhere in the exhibition space.