To my grandmother, dressmaker Evi Alfredsson 1901 – 1966, whom I never met.
The Singer (2012). Photograph of a sewing machine positioned on the shoreline of the Turku archipelago, Finland, facing west toward Sweden. The work combines sound, image, and maritime orientation to address migration, memory, and intergenerational labor, forming an early exploration of themes later developed in my artistic research.
This work is dedicated to my grandmother, dressmaker Evi Alfredsson (1901–1966). The sound component combines the mechanical rhythm of her sewing machine with an archival Finnish tango, A Small Heart, written by Valto Tynnilä and Tatu Pekkarinen and performed by Maire Ojonen of the Harmony Sisters. The recording dates from 1939—the same year my grandmother emigrated from Finland to Sweden.
The photographic work depicts my grandmother’s sewing machine positioned on the shoreline of the Turku archipelago in Finland, where she was born. Oriented westward, facing Sweden across the sea, the machine becomes both an object and a directional marker, linking personal migration history to the maritime landscape.
The work engages sound, image, and site to explore intergenerational memory, labor, and movement across water. The sea functions as a connective and separating space—an element central to later investigations in Big Blu, where surface and depth operate as both physical and metaphorical thresholds.
The installation was presented indoors at Konstepidemin in Gothenburg in 2012 under the title The Singer. Visitors encountered the photographic documentation of the site-specific work while listening to the sound composition through headphones, creating an intimate listening situation that bridged geographic distance, historical time, and embodied experience.
Here you can hear my remix.