Sigrid Holmwood: Blue Wood, Black Iron

Sigrid Holmwood works with dye plants and their histories, in relation to the figure of the peasant. For the exhibition project with Kunsthalle Seinäjoki, Holmwood has studied the local plant dyeing tradition and peasant culture in order to understand the material connections between history and the present day, and the local and global dimension.

She got interested in the blue and black colour that are connected with körttiläisyys (a Lutheran revivalist movement in Finland), and which subsequently became the colours symbolising the extreme-right nationalist movements. The Finnish recipe books of the time of the start of the körttiläisyys movement give instructions to make a black dye from logwood (Sinipuu, Haematoxylum campechianum) – a ‘blue wood’ that is in fact red coloured, and turns violet with alum, blue with copper, and black with the green crystals of iron sulphate. Considering how connected these colours are with Finnish nationalism, it is perhaps surprising to consider the material histories of them, which lead to the Caribbean and coasts of Central America and are linked to piracy, colonialism and slave labour. Holmwood will make an exhibition using these colours that are products of the global forces of colonialism by nation states, but that also tell stories of working-class solidarity that transcended national and racial boundaries.