A conversation about Mechtild von Magdeburg with Åsa Norman and Jonna Bornemark

Published: 8 March, 2019
A conversation about Mechtild von Magdeburg with Åsa Norman and Jonna Bornemark

Photo: part of The Sun Shines Differently Depending On the Weather, 2018 - Åsa Norman

Sunday March 17 at 4 pm – Free admission

Åsa Norman, artist, Jonna Bornemark, philosopher and Caroline Malmström, Art Lab Gnesta talk about the exhibition “The sun shines differently depending on the weather” and Bornemark’s book “Kroppslighetens mystik” from 2015.

The title of the exhibition and the drapery is a quote from the medieval mysticist Mechthild von Magdeburg. She lived in Germany during the 13th century as a Beguine, in a kind of monastic-like community with other women, focused on prayer and social work. In the seven books that make up The Flowing Light of Divinity, Mechthild examines how the relationship with God could give strength to go against contemporary power hierarchies to live a different life than expected. In this way she developed an intimate and personal relationship with the divine – a relationship that examined what it is to be human, what the divine is and what love is. In the exhibition The Sun Shines Differently Depending on the Weather, the artist plays with a couple of progressive movements and places that were shaped as resistance to the harsh social climate. The exhibition hall’s 8×8 meter great wall is covered by a newly produced drapery illustrating a sunrise over water.

Jonna Bornemark is a philosopher at the Center for Practical Knowledge at Södertörn University. She defended her thesis in 2010 with her dissertation Kunskapens gräns, gränsens vetande: en fenomenologisk undersökning av transcendens och kroppslighet. In 2015, she published the book Kroppslighetens mystik about the female 13th-century mystic Mechthild von Magdeburg and her very sensual relationship with God.

The conversation will be held in Swedish.


Read more about the exhibition:
The sun shines differently depending on the weather