Emotional Bodies

A collaborative inquiry into food, emotion, and the body, in collaboration with Botkyrka Konsthall & Botkyrka High School.

Food is never just sustenance; it is pleasure, anxiety, and security. It is inextricably linked to our emotional architecture. These feelings act upon us, shaping our bodies and dictating our movements - drawing us closer to or pushing us away from the world. Rooted in the Latin corpus(body), this project investigates the "emotional bodies" we inhabit. Helene has sought to give physical form to these invisible states, exploring how our internal narratives regarding food manifest as physical presence.

The project was developed involving a group of students from Botkyrka High School. Through qualitative interviews, Helene explored the students’ personal relationships with food. These testimonies served as the "raw material" for the work, allowing her to translate their spoken emotions into tactile objects. Helene developed three "conversation pieces"designed to act as sculptural catalysts for dialogue. To ground these pieces in the reality of the meal, she utilized animal bodies - materials traditionally found on the dining table - as her primary medium.

By using the animal as "the other" body, she explored the visceral tension that arises when we confront the origins of our sustenance.

These objects invite the viewer to reflect on their own relationship with food, observing how emotions take shape, shifting into new movements and new corporal forms.