The Tree in the Palace of Illusions
Eirún Sigurdardóttir poses as a tree in the palace of illusions. In ancient myth and art the tree repeatedly appears as a metaphor for the idea that women are more intimately connected to nature than men. One of Bernini's sculpture springs to mind, based on the myth of Daphne who transformed into a tree to escape from the enamoured Apollo. Because of the assumed close relation between women and nature it could easily be imagined that women could transform into a plant, as Daphne did. The link between women, physical desire, and the tree can be traced back to the story of the original sin; when Eve seduced Adam at the tree of knowledge. Throughout the ages moralists have therefore condemned bodily desires, and worshipped the soul of man at the cost of the body. In modern times the moral condemnation of physical desire has been opposed. Simone de Beauvoir uses for example the metaphor of the tree in her novel The Blood of Others to describe the erotic experiences of a woman who feels like she metamorphoses into a tree when touched and caressed by her lover. By feeling like she is turning into a tree she is not escaping from sex as Daphne did, but completely giving into it.
Eirún’s tree can in fact be seen as a tree of knowledge. Plato argued that the material world we perceive with our senses is to some degree an illusion, but unlike Plato Eirún visions a palace of illusions, not a cave of illusions. Our senses are sometimes unreliable and our memory can play tricks on us, but that does still not mean that we are shut off in a cave where we are blind to the true nature of things, as Plato proposed with his famous allegory of the cave. That is why Eirún does not make a distinction, as Plato did, between true knowledge that can be found outside that cave and the illusions we are faced with inside it. The palace of illusions is all we have. In there the tree of knowledge grows and generates understanding of the world. We do not see the roots of the tree but we know that they are by no means smaller in scale than the canopy and branches that reach upwards into all directions. The being weaves these sprouts out of herself and feeds on the vital energy from within. The palace of illusions is the spinning mill of reality. Our knowledge of the world is fabricated from the understanding we possess at each given time. In our quest for knowledge we endeavour to understand and give meaning to reality, and the golden threads of knowledge reach deep down into the roots of the being Eirún portrays.
In some of her former works Eirún has explored human embodiment. Like Matthew Barney who has studied bodily fluids and glands in relation to male sexual experiences, Eirún has described certain aspects of female sexual experiences in exhibitions such as "Blood-hole". The blood-hole is no less important a place than the palace of illusions; for the palace of illusions grows out of the hole of the blood and the hole of the blood is a cerebral creation of the palace of illusions. The tree in the palace of illusions is both a plant and understanding, material and spiritual. Many things are hidden to us, and our understanding picks and chooses, perceives some things while it is blind to others. All forms of understanding tend to be limited. The cap on the head of the being that Eirún portrays is undeniably reminiscent of Magritte's painting of the lovers with covered heads. Between them and reality is a film that makes the world look heavenly. The being in the palace of illusions is single-eyed, but like the Norse god Odin, she is wise nevertheless. The other eye is invisible, turned inwards, and the being ventures out and into herself in her gold digging. Just as the roots penetrate the underworld, the branches reach out to the sky in the belief that more will come to light under the rays of the sun. The roots that shoot into the underworld like threads of gold venture forward in the same certainty of finding a way and solid ground. The tree-rings mark the passing of time. One thing sprouts from another and the tree is like a babushka doll that continuously generates larger dolls. Art is continuous creation, the constant birth of new things, which always seem foreign at first sight. And Eirún manifests what art does with her own creation of the tree that crochets worlds with its hands.
Sigrídur Thorgeirsdóttir,
philosopher
