Jessica Ullevålseter (1986) is a multi-artist who works with voice, performance, ritual and activism. Her education is from University of Barcelona and University Autonoma de Mexico, where she was greatly influenced by situationism. She collaborates closely with spiritual guides such as priests, sufis and shamans , as well as activists and children. The meeting is the chore of her work; to seed new images into society, rituals that sustain the myth we want to see grow; which is unity in dialogue and mutual dependency. Specifically, the image of an equal ecosystem, that is in mutual dialogue.
Art can explore this dialogue and reciprocity in a most beautiful and tender way. Are some of the western peoples so-called “ancestral orphans” ? What does spiritual uprooting do to a culture? How can we appropriate and reinvent the rites that were once taken away from us? The meaning of ritual is preparation for unity. Thus, we enter in unity. How can we use rituals as a collective, including river, including sea. and relearn to speak with her- her speaking with us, expressing today?
“After many years abroad, in a culture where ancestral knowledge was alive, reverence to mother earth rooted and symbolic gestures practiced, it was difficult to reintegrate in this digital, productive world. The river showed me my way home. Literally and metaphorically. The ice bathing climatized me. I followed her, I arrived at the lake – Oslo’s drinking source- the valley where my ancestors lived for 13 generations. She showed me the source. Many rituals we have made with her, or you may call it art: with the peoples, shamans and priests and activists. She is calling for her personhood rights- she speaks and guides. It is all here. The myth and the salmon embedded in both the river and in the name of Os-Lo, in its creeks and floods, the innermost meeting of salt and sweet water. This is not art.”