Solo-exhibition
Tanken, Malmö
2025.12.14 – 2025.12.28
Installation: fabrics, texts, drawings and photographs.
We knew something was happening when the ladybugs started to bite you.
No one saw exactly when it began.
At first, there were only a few marks on people’s skin — small, round impressions that smelled of metal and smoke.
No one wanted to say anything out loud, but everyone felt it —how the air in the village changed,
how the machines began to whisper as you passed them.
The last of the scientists said it was the rain that changed them. That the acid in the air
clung to their soft shells, and that the earth, saturated with lead and mercury,
had begun to speak in the language of insects.
It started with a thin shimmer on their wings — no longer red, but gray, as if the color itself had faded and withdrawn from the sunlight.
The tiny black spots turned to rivets.
The wings stiffened, but the heart kept beating, slowly, like a rusted clock.
And when the first iron ladybug crawled out of its old shell, it left behind a thin film of red dust.
The last living thing in the world beneath that night’s sky.
Then came more.
They no longer sought leaves or flowers. They were drawn to steel, to nails and to blood.
It was said that they collected memories — that every bite was a way to remember what they had been before the metal took over.
Iron ladybugs emerged from the cracks in the ground, gleaming and trembling. They watched you with blind, shiny faces.
When they bit, it didn’t feel like pain — more like a reminder. Something in the blood awoke.
Someone’s grandmother said it was the mine calling its people back. That metal always wants to return home.
Tack till TANKEN
Stort tack till Karin och Jobst Mailänder.