We are pleased to announce the exhibition Songs of trees by Petra Lindholm at Hellvi Kännungs, Gotland, Sweden this summer.

Petra Lindholm (b. 1973 in Karis, Finland) lives and works outside Älmhult in Småland. She is educated at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (1996–2001) and works with various techniques, including textile assemblages, sound and moving images. Lindholm moves effortlessly between the digital, two-dimensional and the analogue, tactile. She describes her images as a stream of landscapes shaped by memories, the subconscious and personal experiences.

Songs of trees consists of a series of textile works in which the artist explores how place-based experience and intuitive perception can be given form. Through the materiality of the textile, its slow processes and close connection to the body, Lindholm works to capture the moods and emotions that arise in the encounter with the living landscape.

This exhibition features both large tapestries, free-hanging textile collages, and smaller works that approach painting in their expression. In a monumental work (Timelines, 2025), she has taken the exhibition space as her starting point and given the abstract and physical qualities more room to manoeuvre. The work consists of many layers of thin fabrics applied by hand and sewing machine. Lindholm embraces the randomness and spontaneity of the working process and the landscapes emerge organically, with each carefully added layer.

In my recent work, I have turned my attention inwards — away from the constant flow of contemporary information and sought stillness in the presence of nature. The focus is on trees: long-lived organisms that through their silence and steadiness offer a different kind of time and understanding. Through a listening and observing attitude, I have approached individual trees that have become the starting point for the new works.

(Petra Lindholm)