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Ann Hamilton

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Ann Hamilton

(Born 1956, works in Columbus, Ohio)

lignum, 2002

Paper, clothes, wood, warp thread, loudspeakers, etc

With support from Tarkett AB, Wanås Gods AB, Wanås Konst Artlover

In 2002, Ann Hamilton created a new artwork on all five floors of the Barn, built in 1823. In her art, she explores physical experiences, enhancing impressions through the senses. In lignum, she emphasizes the history of Wanås, and the artwork is a space to occupy rather than a narrative to interpret. Hamilton refers to the building as a body. We meet the installation at different heights on each floor. On the ground floor, we find shelves filled with packages wrapped in brown paper, and in a separate room, a text from the classic Swedish novel The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is projected. On the next floor, a parquet floor refers to the castle setting. A circular disc in the floor rotates under our feet. One floor up, there are 42 beechwood tables with carved tops at hip height. The next floor contains kilometres of warp thread strung between the columns that reaches eye level. On the top floor, clothes are sorted and hung above our heads. In the book Imagine Art in Nature, Hamilton writes about the artwork: “an accounting / of labor and materials, of accumulation and loss / or resources, exchanges, history, trade, barter and theft / an economics of labor and power / given or taken”. Sounds can be heard throughout the building. Speakers travel up and down through elevator shafts like threads in a tapestry. Humming, nursery rhymes, traditional herding calls, choral songs, and lowing cows are some of the sounds that Hamilton has recorded at Wanås. The title, lignum, is the Latin word for wood. At Wanås, the material connects interior and exterior, past and present.