GISTNANDE 2024

At the Pikisaari Biennale, Annelie Wallin continues her socially engaged environmental artwork Gistnande, which started in the summer of 2022 in the Stockholm archipelago. The artwork is participatory and will be created in Pikisaari’s Konepajanpuisto in July-August. The focus of the work Gistnande is the Baltic Sea both as a natural destination and as a cultural and environmental resource.

Annelie Walllin grew up in Stockholm’s southern archipelago on Landsort’s pilot site, Öja. She remembers the Baltic Sea in the 1960s and early 1970s, when there was a lot of fish in the lake and every summer both cod and eel were caught for household needs. The artwork’s title ”Gistnande” comes from the Swedish expression ”att gista nät”; which means to untangle, clean and hang nets to dry. This was traditionally done against a boathouse or on scaffolding on an open flat surface and was then called gistvall. “Gistnande” suggests that something is going on, that it is a work in process.

Annelie Wallin works explore previously unknown connections between Stockholm and Pikisaari, historically linked to shipping, shipbuilding, and pitch burning. She creates the artwork for Pikisaari Konepajanpuisto in interaction with people. The aim is to continue connecting the work started in Stockholm and create new networks as a continuation of old networks. Gistnande focuses on the relationship between humans and the sea, responsible actions, and perspectives. The work’s actual meaning emerges knot by knot, in the meeting between people, with the sea, memories, dreams, and shouldering responsibility for each other and the Baltic Sea.

You can join and create GISTANDE with the artist Annelie Wallin in Pikisaari Konepajanpuisto from August 7 to August 15 between 3 and 5 p.m.

I had brought the old net from 2022 and I hung it between two birches, it was a perfect sign and starting point for the new nets to come.

Thanks to:

ArtHub Pikisaari for inviting me to Artist in Residence and the Pikisaari Biennale.

Swedish Art Grant Committee

GISTNANDE
In the work Gistnande in the exhibition ”The Ocean That, Surrounds Us” on the island of Rådmansö 2022, the net returns as a form and visual practice and creates a direct link to a place where fishing was central to the local economy, but is now more of a memory. The title of the work comes from the Swedish word “gist”, which refers to the wooden poles that fishing nets could be hung from after the catch had been brought ashore. The artwork resembles a so-called “gistvall”, an open, flat stretch of ground set with racks for hanging fishing nets up to dry. A “gistvall” made it easier to remove seaweed from the nets and repair any damage. A “gist” was a common piece of equipment along the shoreline near jetties where the nets were brought ashore after fishing. However, the title of the work Gistnande refers to a process rather than an object. The work is a grieving and memorial process, in which the local inhabitants took part by hand-knitting the work itself and talking about the place and its history of eel and cod fishing. In this piece, the practical work of tying the twine that forms the net functions as a way of accessing memories of the place and creating a collective memorial that opens up conversations about the history of the place.

At the same time, the work literally bears traces of the participants’ bodies through the tying of the nets by their own hands. The work stretches a grid across the site, like the artist’s grid to get an overview of what is to be depicted. But instead of the present, it is the past that is activated and captured in the mesh of the art installation.

Karin Hansson
Artist and Professor in Media of Technology at Södertörns University

Excerpt from Karin Hansson’s text about the work GISTNANDE from the book about Annelie Wallin’s artistry