A Mesh of Kin #1

A Mesh of Kin is a new body of work by Astri Styrkestad Haukaas that explores the dissolution of boundaries between self and landscape, memory and place, grief and joy. Rather than treating these emotional states as opposites, Haukaas considers how they exist simultaneously, layered and inseparable. Through fluid gestures, shifting reflections, and landscapes that move between recognition and abstraction, the paintings embrace ambiguity over resolution. Drips become rivers, mountains suggest bodies, and water complicates the distinction between the physical world and its reflection, creating environments that feel at once familiar and psychologically charged.

Throughout the series, Haukaas returns to recurring gestures and visual fault lines — horizons where solid ground gives way, reflections depart from their sources, and fragments of arches, bridges, and colonnades emerge within the landscape. These architectural traces suggest inheritance and the ways histories are carried forward, transformed through memory and retelling. Repetition becomes a means of discovery, allowing familiar forms to shift in meaning from one painting to the next. In A Mesh of Kin, Haukaas creates a world defined by interconnectedness and continual transformation, where landscape becomes a space for examining what is inherited, what changes, and what endures.