IAPMA Paper Art Biennale 2026: Impressions of Nature - Paper as Memory
I’m proud to share that one of my seaweed paper artworks “My Seven Children’ was selected to be part of the International Association of Papermakers and Artists (IAPMA) Paper Art Biennale 2026 “Impressions of Nature: Paper as Memory”.
This work is from my Sealskin series. In the Icelandic Sealskin Story, the Seal Woman has 7 children when living on land. These are the faces of those children, from whom she is forever separated when she returns to live in the sea.
The faces were made individually from pulps of a range of different species of Icelandic seaweed, then attached to the board in combination with direct pulp painting and layers of resin.
For this exhibition, artists were asked to explore the theme of paper as a living palimpsest — a material that absorbs and preserves the layered traces of life. Originally from the Greek palin (again) and psēstos (scraped), a palimpsest was a manuscript in which older writing was partially erased to make space for new text while remnants of the original remained. Today, the word refers more broadly to any surface or object that holds visible layers of change, memory or history.
Paper is more than a surface for marks — it is a sensitive body that remembers. Each fold, crease and impression echoes the gestures of both nature and human presence, transforming paper into a vessel of memory. When paper is created from other materials — worn textiles, handwritten pages or plant fibers — it retains something of its origins. These embedded histories remain visible or felt, forming a quiet continuity between past and present. Through the tactile and repetitive processes of papermaking — tearing, pulping and pressing — paper collects and carries stories not by overwriting them but by layering meaning.
The exhibition will be held in Silkeborg, Denmark, at the Art Centre Silkeborg Bad / KunstCentret Silkeborg Bad, from February 07 until May 25, 2026.