Heidi Rødstøl
Visual artist
I work with site-specific and temporary visual exploration of different premises, be it established exhibition spaces, empty buildings or other spaces I have access to. Often these are what one might call contemporary ruins, rooms that have played out their function as residential, commercial buildings, etc. This may involve a degree of decay, while at the same time there are traces of the people and the activity for which the rooms have been intended and used. In this work, I am concerned with absence and presence. Traces and stories about lived lives, both real, but also what we dictate into them. I am also concerned with deconstruction and the perishable in our immediate surroundings. What do we define as decay and what does this say about us? In my work, people are absent, but their presence becomes visible almost as circumstantial evidence. The rooms also become visual structures in which we can place our own experiences and stories.