Ulla-Stina Wikander

"Silence", Embroidered portrait of woman with bird book and sunglasses sculpture

2024

Ulla-Stina Wikander was born in 1957 and raised in Gothenburg. She is currently living in Kullavik/Stockholm, Sweden and has been working as an artist since 1986. For over 15 years she has collected cross stitch embroidery, and today has a big collection with over 100 different designs. These embroideries have been made by women and are often seen as kitsch and regarded pretty worthless. Wikander has mixed feelings for them, sometimes they are very beautiful and she wants to bring them back to life. In 2012 she started to cover ordinary household items from the 70s, like a vacuum cleaner, sewing machine, electric mixer, etc. She finds it interesting to see how these objects transform in a new context; the obsolet, the things we do not want any longer, the old and forgotten things. They become artifacts from a bygone era, disguised, camouflaged and dressed. Wikander gives them a second life and although she cuts the embroideries into pieces, thinks of them as new, and dressed up. She visits flea markets and vintage stores to find cross stitch embroidery and the objects to work with. Some of the small objects, like an iron or a phone take her a day or two to make, but the bigger installations takes weeks to finish. Over the last few years she has been invited to different exhibitions.