ELLEN RINGSTAD

Ashes to Lather (Soap in Your Face) (2026) is a soap sculpture cast from the original mould of Burning Woman (2016). While the original version in candle wax focused on fire, this iteration seeks water as a counterforce—cleansing, dissolving, and circulating. Janus, the god of thresholds and transitional states, is represented through a double, ten-years-younger cast of Ringstad’s head.

​

The sculpture is installed for use: visitors literally wash their hands on the artwork and on the artist’s body. The performative element activates an everyday ritual that is both intimate and collective. The act points toward rituals of luck and the symbolic power of touch, while also addressing wear, consumption, and the impermanence of art—and of the artist.

​

The soap mass is organised as a self-biographical, three-dimensional mind map of scent and use zones—an olfactory palette and cultural crucible rooted in her multicultural background—with elements derived from therapeutic oils and plants connected to Ringstad’s farm on the west coast of Norway and to Madeira’s subtropical flora, soaps, and traditions.