Harp Art Lab | Harplinge Windmill

Leif Holmstrand

HYMENOPTERAN BOSATSU is a sculpture born through schizophrenia-related fantasies about a living stationary bicycle, and from delusions concerning giant insect reproduction through sound. The stationary bicycle sounded like a bee colony when used, and it looked like the protozoa version of a human sized space hymenoptera (at least in the artist’s mind). So, it had to be wrapped in eight hundred metres of clingwrap, strapped in a weblike cuirass or corset of different kinds of ratchet straps, cables, cell phone chargers et cetera, all of this secured with padlocks and carbiners. And a song had to be sung: imitating the buzzing sound of the stationary bike, I recorded my insect voice over and over again and made a space bee choir, a Hymenopteran Bosatsu Song.

Leif Holmstrand installed two outdoor sculptures at Harp Art Lab 2013. On the image: High Restrainment, Leif Holmstrand, 2013, Permanent Installation at Harp Art Lab, Harplinge, Sweden

Babies in a Net, Leif Holmstrand, 2013, Permanent Installation at Harp Art Lab, Harplinge, Sweden

LEIF HOLMSTRAND: Swedish artist, musician, writer. A Malmö resident since 1997. Work is currently being done on physical topics such as body essentialism and household waste, distorted through pictorial and linguistic filters of paranoia and phantasm. Heavy sculptural installation pieces built out of garbage, textiles and manipulated cut-up furniture may alternate with sound installation, still image and video. Performance also plays an important part in this body of work. A lot of the projects are small fragments of a much larger, possibly collective queer activist pursuit. Born 1972.