The Mourning Dove

A solo exhibition by Rebecka Tollens

L’Artichaut, November 2018, Brussels

Rebecka Tollens' luminous charcoal drawings evoke childhood, the complexity of family relationships, life, and dreams. Between personal mythology and everyday life, she sketches surreal and timeless scenes, all softened by the poetry of dreamlike landscapes that echo her childhood in Sweden. Tollens, in search of her personal truth, goes beyond the language that often encloses a universal truth in its words. Through her imagination, she holds us captive and fascinates us, while leaving us free of any interpretation, her drawings appealing purely to the beauty of emotion, a kind of universal beauty. The series of drawings "The mourning dove", tells the story of the journey of birds to a rain cloud, a cloud that weeps. Only their song is a sign of rain, and their presence signals that a soul is passing peacefully from earth to heaven. They are the messengers of death, planting seeds of hope where the soil is not fertile.

Curator: Marie de Ganay

© Photography: Solveig Herrström