During clean-up dives in the Oslofjord, I started to collect objects that have already become entangled with a living system. Covered in pacific oysters and other marine organisms, they are no longer just waste. Sometimes I even feel a sense of guilt removing them from the water. Marine life cannot refuse what we leave in its environment. It must adapt, if it can.
What interests me in the oyster is the way it responds to something foreign entering the body. Over time, this intrusion is transformed into a pearl. The process itself makes me think about the oyster’s associations with eroticism, fertility, femininity, and the ways women’s bodies continue to be controlled and objectified.
In this work, the pearl is human-made. What is being held and preserved is a remnant of human presence. What does it mean to live with what cannot be refused? At what point does intrusion become part of a body, or of an ecosystem?
