(in answer to last comment)
Unlike my previous works in urban space (photo montages with simple sayings in the picture, shown right next to commercial advertising) the works in Oslo, however, are even quieter for me, or cryptically, they tend to include a privacy which would be protected - as it is mentioned by Steffen Krüger.
The intervention in public space is, therefore, this for me: To make or reveal the opposite of what else happens in the public media. Only the type of presentation in the form of large placards refers to the visual strategies of advertising - the eye-catcher - and of course the "sense of mission."
Comment by Steffen Krüger
Private Snapshot meets Public Space – an old love affair
Thyra Schmidt shares a common problem with most of us: How to ‘feel real’ and how to ‘really feel’ when all our feelings are constantly tickled and stimulated from outside? How to maintain a sentimental honesty, let alone innocence, when this innocence is abused and manipulated over and over again, mostly by advertising that tries to fit its products right into our social and emotional stratosphere. – Missing and longing, craving and yearning, having and holding.
Thyra’s way to defend her sense of authenticity is making her private life public. What we see in her series “I can’t just be nowhere” is mostly pictures of her near and dear, taken during summer vacations or during long hiking tours through Norway; what we get to read is short excerpts and quotations from her personal reading and writing. In this way Thyra constructs small suggestive daydreams, not far from her own romantic fantasies, which, blown up to bigger-than-life size, appear like little islands of conventional, yet somehow vital feeling against a sea of professional attention-grabbers.
No doubt, this is absolutely likeable and becomes ever more likeable each time one passes one of her works in the street. Open invitations to places without vested interests. However, I wonder whether these places are not too low above sea-level. Hasn’t the ‘global emotional warming’ progressed too far already? – My first thought was that Thyra’s works might not be tough enough, not aggressive enough in order to compete for the public’s attention. But probably it is exactly the opposite: Probably Thyra doesn’t make herself frail and vulnerable enough for her works to fully reach out to us passers-by.
The relationship between the private and the public has been tackled before. Against the background of this tradition Thyra’s carefulness in keeping the most important aspects of her private life intact makes her works seem to fall a little short. Instead of remaining vague and secretive about who we see in the pictures and about what might be alluded to in the text extracts, a radical transparency might have resulted in a fresher approach to a somewhat time-worn love affair.
(comment #1 about "Image update", Steffen Krueger on 2009-10-21)
