Water and desert

- a booklet with text only, as a complement to my original book "Vatten och öken" which is richly illustrated.
You can find extracts from this book at www.heidrun.se where you also can purchase it.
The book and booklet can also be ordered directly from me through e-mail.

In this book I want to tell about the progress of a project. From making embroideries with rusty Coca-Cola tops and experiencing the drought during some winter periods in Morocco to rainwater harvesting in the Rajasthani desert in the Northwest of India. I want to share the knowledge and the idea sparks that have lead me to the most fun and meaningful things I have ever done.

At the basis of all this there is a strong concern for where our society is heading. This is my effort to ease the mind´s unrest through at least doing something that just I can do in a sea of possibilities.

Here are many pictures of my own works on the theme of Water and Desert, and here are pictures and stories from the cooperation with Indian village women and girls, who make embroideries about water and their every-day reality – a cooperation which for them can be developed into a source of income. And here are pictures and stories from the town of Jaisalmer far out in the Thar desert, near the border to Pakistan. In short, most of what I have experienced and has entered in my mind during the long period of work from the year of 2000 until now, 2010.

-I don´t solve any world problems with my stitches, but somewhat I ease the mind´s unrest, when it can be changed into creating.

Elsa Agélii

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"Elsa Agélii stands with both her feet well placed (planted?) in the earth and turns her gaze inwards, but also outwards. In all her work she is innovative, wide-embracing, including and generous. Her outgoing projects grow, blossom and continue to live by their own. Her artistic work, from diary embroideries to wall ornaments, has room for thoughts and feelings about all the great variety of life – existential questions, political events, power relations, solidarity with all living beings – no matter if it is expressed in a narrative, symbolic or abstract way. Stitch by stitch Elsa Agélii forms her view of life, and all in all a rich world is built, full of nuances, where each and every work of art has its own intrinsic character."

Barbro Werkmäster, Art historian and Writer

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