Western Lands


Concept for the exhibition Western Lands is a combination of W.S. Burroughs’ book Western Lands and fragments of personal history. In the works apart from paintings and drawings I also use family documents from World War II.
The main motives of my works are fragments of memories from my personal life and family history and fragments of Burroughs’ mythology. Through my works, I’m trying to analyze the stories of the family members that are gone and the ones that are left. By using assemblage/collage to intertwine (past and present) all the elements, I’m trying to create my own world. My work consists of paintings, assemblage/collage and drawings with words. Every scrap of paper and document is important because it represents all that is left of a family that once existed. I use Burroughs’ work and his idea of the afterlife, in which every man has to deal with his own demons on the way to heaven or perish, as a personal way of dealing with the hard family history. The work was also inspired by my great grandfathers writings in which he tells of the hard family history .