Linnea Larsdotter Mikkelä embraces duality with ‘and there I was in all my danger’

The months bookending the arrival of Covid were ones of transition for Linnea Larsdotter Mikkelä. In late 2019, the poet and visual artist separated from her longtime partner. Then stay-at-home regulations forced by the pandemic led to the temporary shutdown of the film industry in which she had long made her living.

“And it was like, okay, both my most immediate, intimate world and the world at large are changing,” Mikkelä said in early June at Secret Studio, where her new exhibition, “and there I was in all my danger,” kicks off with an opening reception tonight (Friday, June 13). “I was definitely going through a change, and a little bit of rediscovery of myself and of those parts of me that I had sort of lost contact with. It was a little bit like taking the reins back.”

With the film industry then off-limits, Mikkelä said she was struck by a realization that she was imbued “with a creative soul and had no choice but to create,” leading her to turn immediately in that moment to poetry, a form she believed had been brewing in her for some time. The creative pivot was further fueled by its accessibility, the construction of these verses requiring nothing more than “a pen, some paper, and a mindset.” 

“I didn’t have to go out and seek materials or anything,” continued Mikkelä. “I could just sit down and build something – a world, a feeling I wanted to convey, whatever.”

Mikkelä traced her interest in art back through her childhood in Smygehamn, Sweden, where she grew up raised by blue-collar parents who introduced her to ballet and violin beginning at age 3. At 10 years old, she landed her first role in a musical, the newly written “Pamela,” which ignited a lifelong love for the stage. “And I think it’s more the storytelling of it than the performance,” Mikkelä said. “It’s about evoking emotions in someone else and maybe giving them an allowance to feel something.”

The poems that emerged early in the pandemic served a similar purpose, with one piece, “Get In,” incorporating Mikkelä’s film background in both its cultural touch points (the poem references “Thelma & Louise,” Clint Eastwood and “Spinal Tap”) and in the way utilized language to builds immersive scenes. “This poem, it’s cut like a movie, and it cuts between scenes, where we’re in different environments. … If it’s words on a page, it’s asking, how can I transport you there? Is it a scent? Is it a structure? Is it a feeling?”

With “and there I was in all my danger,” Mikkelä started to experiment with the varying ways these verses could take on more visual, tactile form. In one installation, for instance, she stitched the poem “Get In” into a vintage bedsheet, which will be displayed above a bed set just inside the entrance to the Franklinton gallery.

“Texture is just this incredible sensory thing,” said the artist, turning the sheet over in her hand to display the embroidered flowers existent in the fabric, which she acquired at a flea market in Sweden. “Look at the hours that went into this. And it might even be hand-woven fabric. But there’s something about feeling it, and the age of it, where it almost connects you to generations.”

The bed will rest nearby a series of soft, nature themed prints overlain with lines pulled from poems that feature words with purposely harder-edged consonants. “And I think that’s really important, this idea of duality,” Mikkelä said. “Here’s this print of this pretty pink rose. And then I want the text on top of it to be like a little flick on the nose, or a mini slap in the face.”

The draw the artist feels toward duality has its roots in the place in which she grew up. Mikkelä recalled how she could face one way on the family farm in Sweden and see soft fields of green that appeared to stretch for miles and then turn around and be confronted by the wild, harsh, untamable ocean.

“Growing up by it, there’s just something about the angry ocean I find very calming,” she said. “And I think I exist between these two worlds: the softer, floral world, and then this unpredictable force of nature.”