Agnes Widbom, Artist
Agnes Widbom (b. 1990, Stockholm) lives in San Francisco and explores the relationship between the body, the senses, and their surroundings through painting, photography, and video.
Agnes was invited by Swedish Tyre Recycling to interpret tyre recycling through her art. The work resulted in the creations Sun, Drop and Division.
Sun
In the series Sun, Agnes Widbom creates images from recycled tyre particles using breath and sunlight, connecting cycles of material, nature, and the body. Widbom uses a camera-less photographic process called a photogram, in which sunlight creates images through shadow and exposure.
In making the images, Widbom arranges piles of rubber granulate from recycled tyres onto paper coated with a light-sensitive solution. With her breath, she disperses the particles in various shapes across the paper and places it in sunlight. As the solution darkens in various blue tones depending on the sun's position, the shadows of the particles become points of light.
By using recycled tyres, breath and sunlight to create the images, Widbom approaches recycling through the body and atmosphere, reflecting on why we recycle.
"I see the images as connecting the recycled tyre to broader questions about why we recycle. Ultimately, it is about a cleaner, and therefore bluer, atmosphere, and about being able to take deeper breaths."
Drop
In the image, rubber granulate is mixed with water and charcoal from burnt cherry pits. From the centre of the paper, the mixture flows in the opposite direction. The circle, or core, appears to both leak and be held firmly in the centre. The image depicts movement and fixation, much like the tyre material, which undergoes a dynamic process in recycling before being fixed into a new material.
50% recycled granulate powder, cherry pit coal, and water
Division
The illustration Division takes inspiration from hand-painted depictions of cell division. The image is created using charcoal pigment and a light-sensitive fluid that is exposed to sunlight. Like microscopic images of cells, the illustration has been scanned in high resolution and then cropped into new compositions that evoke associations with landscapes.
Through the illustrations and their connection to material, body, and nature, Agnes Widbom explores ideas of recycling, with a focus on reinterpretation and circularity. Division, together with its cropped versions, was created to illustrate chapters in the Swedish Tyre Recycling Jubilee Book Repurposed Performance.
