A Soft Armour 3

A five week residency titled Walking Peace at ARNA (Art & Nature) in the Avian Kingdom in Sweden, at the very spot where two pilgrim trails meet in Harlösa. Walking Peace is a green, slow and peaceful way of making new connections across cultural backgrounds and religions, creating art as a statement for peace while walking.
During five weeks, we walked from the east coast of Sweden to the west coast, joined by different (groups of) people daily and meeting people on the road. I wore a black three-piece walking suit and while walking and talking I embroidered it with random lines and patterns with a never-ending red thread, as if catching the ideas, words and feelings we exchanged in the fabric. It was inspired by an old Asian saying that people who are destined to meet are connected by a red thread: it might be long, it might be entangled, but it will never break. By the end of the residency the suit resembled a map. I also collected and carried y (pronounced “why”) shaped branches and worked with the snails that were present everywhere, descendants from snails that were brought to that part of Sweden by monks in the 12th century.