Emma Bäcklund

Knead

Knead is part of Sloppy Tails (Grow from Walls). These fragmented images assemble as a grid collage on the gallery wall where empty voids signify lack of collective memory based upon selective archival material. They originate from two different archival photographs that have been fused and confused, disorganised and reconstructed pointing toward a paradox between control systems and discharge of boundary, between obeying and rebelling. One of the photographs show young girls at a Baptist sunday church school, the other image is from a session of 'laying on of hands'; a ritual that is a part of religious practices found in various cultures throughout the world. The hands bless and heal while they knead into belief systems. It is often used in the context of confirmation or baptism but has has also been used to heal skin diseases. These shattered and rearranged photographs focuses on details of gestures and bodily arrangements, hands and hair. Hair as a symbol of restriction and behaviour refer to the constructed role of the female in 1945 America, still relevant and presents here an uncomfortable relation between the male hands and the female body.