| For the last eight years, I have been working with sub-cultural phenomena as a theme with roots in my own experiences and engagements. I use portraiture as a method, often in more or less realistic, multi-layered painting, but I sometimes also employ photography, text and music in my work. I allow this theme to permeate the whole project so that the aesthetic is formed by the content. I worked with Swedish anarchists for a number of years in the project "Riot Rose, Rosy Riot" and later "Björns Trädgård (Björn's Garden)” using a simple non-hierarchical aesthetic, but I am now using a darker and more ornate aesthetic in my present Goth project. |  |
Sub-Cultural Phenomena – Ulrika Warmling
For the last eight years, I have been working with sub-cultural phenomena as a theme with roots in my own experiences and engagements. I use portraiture as a method, often in more or less realistic, multi-layered painting, but I sometimes also employ photography, text and music in my work. I allow this theme to permeate the whole project so that the aesthetic is formed by the content. I worked with Swedish anarchists for a number of years in the project "Riot Rose, Rosy Riot" and later "Björns Trädgård (Björn's Garden)” using a simple non-hierarchical aesthetic, but I am now using a darker and more ornate aesthetic in my present Goth project.
I'm inspired by the way Gothic Lolitas depict themselves on the internet and by different kinds of Gothic media, such as Japanese Goth music books and videos, the Japanese vampire game Castlevania on Playstation and the Tokyo restaurant Vampire Café. But, my biggest inspiration comes from reading Gothic novels. As a child, I loved reading Gothic short stories. During my teenage years, I read Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and, by the time I was 20, I discovered Anne Rice and the contemporary vampire novel. I fell in love with Goth as a literary genre.
Even though I am partially inspired by painting from the mid 1800s, my biggest inspiration comes from other media, mainly music and literature. My love for music is also probably what made me become attracted to subcultures when I was a teenager in the 80s in the first place.
Personally, I don't consider myself a Goth—I am more Indie, if that. But, I have a genuine interest in and a special love for Goth culture, which probably comes from my own brief encounter with the 80s version of Goth—listening to Siouxie & the Banshees and the Sisters of Mercy in my youth. For a while, I painted my face white and always wore dark clothes. Since I still belong to many different minority groups at the same time—I’m married to a woman, I’m an artist, etc.—it becomes natural for me to express this feeling of belonging to a minority group in my art.
In my portraits in particular I show appearances that break from the norm in terms of how one is supposed to look—for example, for a man to dress "too feminine,” for someone to dress "too dark" in the summer, to break the standards of what is considered natural, fresh, feminine, masculine, comfortable and practical. In Sweden, as in many other countries, we have such homogenous taste that this aspect of our culture can be difficult to discover until someone contradicts it. To me, diverse aesthetic sensibilities and the difference between good and bad taste only symbolize different lifestyles and choices, nothing more.
Both the Romantic European Gothic tradition and the Japanese Gothic Lolita subculture provide me with many opportunities to express myself freely. The Gothic Lolita subculture in particular has so many different subdivisions to chose from. There is Kodona, where a girl dresses as a young boy in the 1800s, which is the Dandy style for both female and male. There are different kinds of Gothic Lolitas. The range is from Sweet Lolitas in pastel colors, Gothic Lolitas, Classic Lolitas, Elegant Gothic Lolitas (with more mature or Victorian dresses) to Punk Lolitas and Casual Lolitas, etc. The men can as easily dress as a Gothic Lolita by way of becoming an Elegant Gothic Aristocrat in a high hat. The Gothic Lolita community is very open-minded when it comes to cross-dressing. In this respect, it often becomes apparent how superficial gender really is—how you actually have dress yourself into a "girl" even if you are already born female, and vice versa. And you don't need to be gay to do it either.
This art project is not about presenting Gothic Lolitas or Romantic Goth, but I use the dress code to create a certain Goth feeling. In Les Pièces Noires, I wanted to create a Victorian Goth Salon. In my forthcoming exhibition, on the other hand, I want to see my paintings as dark windows turning into something else, something different.
