The Disappointed and the Offended

• My ongoing work, The Disappointed and Offended, is based on reading Sweden’s evening newspapers on a daily basis and finding low-level stories of failure where someone has been offended, hurt, snubbed, disappointed, or otherwise given cause to complain. I reproduce the newspaper’s photograph of the person using the simple technique, often used by children, of dripping molten wax on the image. When dry, the wax is carefully removed with an imprint of the face on it. The wax medallions are hung on long walls from pieces of thread embedded in the wax. A list of printed one-sentence texts nearby tells the stories behind the disappointed and offended faces, thus making the work vascillate between empathy and malicious pleasure. Begun in 1994, the series now has more than 650 portraits.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Konstvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Art History (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Art

Konstvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

art (subject category)