anja roemer

The leading theme in my work, you might say, is the tension between being (there) and not being (there).
When I was busy making memorials this theme was given form by the symbolism of the fruit and seed; the-in-betweens of two lives and the tension it contains.
The more abstract objects coming forth from this image show the same tension inside itself; tension between material and absence of material, always in organic forms.
In the sculptures I recently made, developed during my Artist-in-Residency in the south of Sweden 2013, the inner space between two masses has more importance than the outer shape of the sculpture. The tension is given form by absence of material. The immaterial shows itself by the material. The critical distance between two masses shows their connection.
In consequence of this idea I now want to focus more on the meaning of connection.

The installation LAST MINUTE deals about the things men are chasing at during their lifetimes; the elusive ‘something’; maybe life itself. What would be LIFE itself? In the space between material forms I try to express my thoughts about that; vibrations, energy, warmth, thoughts, the urgency to connect or to disconnect, everything that is invisible and yet seen.
Since my working period in Sweden I symbolize this idea by means of THE CLOUD. Everything moving around the world, constantly integrating and disintegrating, can be seen in a cloud. Water and air are maybe the most elementary elements to life. They literally connect people (water and air run through us all) in a material (= horizontal) way but also connect people in a symbolic way; is not the cloud the most specific symbol of thoughts and dreams? Thoughts and dreams are also migrating around the world in a constant stream. There is not ONE thought or dream that is not shared with someone else. And last but not least: clouds are vertical connections between earth and sky, between material and least material, symbolizing in a vertical way the connection between the living and the dead, past present and future.
I am working on realizing this symbol of connection by executing CLOUDS around the world (WWWCLOUD-project), in different materials, in different settings.
The installation MISSING CHILDREN (also a work in progress) is about children or souls that are out of sight or ‘absent’ (from the material). Child-size moppets are floating just a little loose from the earth, moving with every breeze of air, elusive. They symbolize not only the really missing (kidnapped, murdered, died or run away) children but also the disappeared or suppressed spirits; spontaneous life-cores that were quenched by hardship, suppression or trauma’s.
BEING PART OF IT is an extra title to pieces of work to express that it is part of a bigger story; a slice of a stem, a bone of a skeleton, a piece of a jigsaw-puzzle. We are all part of a bigger story, mostly disconnected and trying to reconnect.

May the tension between the pieces (instead of a fixed and fragile one) become more mobile and therefore a playful interspace between people world wide”.