ELLEN RINGSTAD

In Situ is an ongoing body of work consisting of site-responsive installations and staged photography, operating between sculpture and documentation. Textile sculptures are temporarily installed in domestic and semi-domestic interiors—attics, basements, stairwells, transitional rooms—before being dismantled, leaving the photographic image as the primary trace.
 

The series includes works from the Domestic Constrictor series, in which textile and rope-based forms are suspended, tightened, looped, or gathered within interiors already marked by use, decay, or quiet neglect. These spaces act as active participants: peeling paint, exposed wiring, worn floor surfaces, inherited furniture, and architectural compromises operate as material counterparts rather than backdrops.
 

The Domestic Constrictor lives somewhere between the animal and the handmade. Its form emerges from gestures as old as textiles themselves: washing, carding, spinning, twisting, binding, tracing a lineage of domestic textile practices, long associated with women’s work: repetitive, embodied, and historically undervalued. The wool - sourced from local spæl sheep (Norwegian Short Tail Landrace) that wander through the artist’s grassfields - must first be cleaned of earth, grass, and lanolin before it can be transformed. Coarse and itchy, unsuitable for clothing (unlike i.e merino wool) it is a material often discarded or given away.
 

The constrictor knot is known for its grip: once tightened, it rarely releases. In this work, the knot becomes both a method and a metaphor—a structure of control and containment, but also of connection and care. The act of binding carries echoes of bondage: an aesthetic of discipline and intimacy, where restraint becomes a form of relation. Domesticity and danger coexist. The gesture of tying recalls both the precision of handwork and the instinct of an animal tightening its coil.


With thanks to the owners of the site, who wish to remain anonymous.