I remember
This work received an special mention from the VIDEONALE.13 award jury.
Language seems to be the worst medium with which to represent our past. Its linearity and its causal narrative logic often does not correspond to with the chaotic structure of our memories. Öhman explores the medium of video to create memoryscapes that better represent the way we perceive, construct, and store our lived experiences in our heads. Although in I remember the artist attempts to talk about a repressed episode of her personal history, the appropriation of somebody else's video material suggests the existence of some archetypal patterns that we all have in common. Behind the uniqueness of our experiences there lies a universal longing for love and acceptance, as well as fear and the desire to escape – a dichotomy that perpetually generates the tension between the need to remember and the need to forget.
The dreamlike sequences of Öhman's work with their surreal frame transitions are punctuated with lines of text that do not explain the images but rather emerge between images, set against a black background. Thus, language functions as a parallel reality that often proves insufficient to express what we feel and remember. (Olena Chervonik)
About the video
About the artist
- 1970 in Umeå, SWE.
Studied at Kungliga konsthögskolan in Stockholm, SWE, at Environmental Art Department of Glasgow School of Art, GBR
