The Complexity of Truth

Today’s society is built around the idea that something is either right or it is wrong. It can never be both. I grew up that way. Everything could fit into one box or the other and rules were something to follow. Today however, I am curious about the idea of truth as something disputable and I no longer believe in a universal and everlasting truth. Instead, I see truth as a flexible, transformative matter based on perceptions of the individual. I believe that over time, one person can go through multiple experiences of truth, all with equal validity. And simultaneously others experience different truths, no less true.

Often truth has some connection to tradition. Tradition is about behaving or performing according to what has been done in the past and this simple repetition can make us believe in them as absolute truths.

In my experience, following traditions leaves little judgment to the individual. Doing so unquestionably and without development will make time stand still, as all traditions belong to a different time. I find it of importance that we become critical in our approach to what has already been defined as “right”. Allowing ourselves to be led in new directions, based on the improved understandings that new experiences carry, opens us to finding new truths of that specific moment in time.

My current work deals with this complex nature of truth. Here paradoxes replace right and wrong, black and white, as contrasts become one. I see no limits as to what is possible since everything consist of multiple layers, either to be added or subtracted. Duplicity is part of everything and therefore my work either consist of more than one truth or it offers another truth than the one we are accustomed to.

Conceptually, visually, as well as physically, I try to challenge our basic understandings of possibilities. I use vinyl, water, latex and glass for their characteristics of being flexible, malleable, optical, transparent or translucent, as these properties are so immediate to the eye. They appear easily accessible when in fact they are very complex.

I am a glassblower and did my undergraduate in a glass department. My approach to glass is of a very experimental character where I challenge the possibilities of the material rather than following traditions. However, today I find the choice of just one material to be limiting. Using other materials has allowed me to push my ideas further and as a result I no longer see glass as my only material.