The Tender Whisper of the Network Underground. Review on the occasion of Lena Lindahl’s solo exhibition Der Wald at kunst.wirt.schaft Graz

Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it. It has no special emblems or symbols, nor does it lead to crime, or prompt envy. […] 
Tenderness is spontaneous and disinterested; it goes far beyond empathetic fellow feeling. Instead it is the conscious, though perhaps slightly melancholy, common sharing of fate. Tenderness is deep emotional concern about another being, its fragility, its unique nature, and its lack of immunity to suffering and the effects of time. Tenderness perceives the bonds that connect us, the similarities and sameness between us. It is a way of looking that shows the world as being alive, living, interconnected, cooperating with, and codependent on itself.
Olga Tokarczuk, The Tender narrator, Nobel Lecture 2018 [1]


A solo exhibition is never a singular voice emerging from a chorus; rather, it is a field of relations. What appears as one artistic position unfolds, upon closer attention, as a multiplicity of worlds—interwoven, autonomous, and in constant dialogue. It is precisely within this plurality that the depth of a solo practice reveals itself.



Lena Lindahl, Der Wald, ensemble view at kunst.wirt.schaft Graz



The first time I came across Lena Lindahl’s [2] work was during one of the early editions of the Cominelli Award, organized by AGC, the Italian Contemporary jewellery Association. 

From the textured surface of a brooch, a monkey was looking at me, asking seriously for attention: Do you know what this strange creature next to me is, with all this hair on its face and that unusual black thing on its head: what is it? Can you explain to me why the things that cover its body are similar yet so different from me? And now?: and that was the beginning.



Lena Lindahl, Darwin and I, brooch, zinc and silver, 2015​.



Eleven years later, I had the opportunity to see Lindahl’s exhibition in Graz, hosted by the kunst.wirt.schaft association, along with a body of work exploring life in a forest: Der Wald.

Swedish author, Lena Lindahl obtained her Master of Fine Arts in jewelry art and silversmithing from HDK Valand University of Gothenburg in 1998: a multifaceted artist, she is represented in several international galleries and venues, and as an established artist, she has taken part in numerous solo and collective international exhibitions.

 
"A forest is a home. It is contemplation and peace in protected spaces. It is also a place where evolution displays itself and presents itself most sublimely", explains the statement, and, as a forest, a solo exhibition is never a singular voice emerging from a chorus; rather, it is a field of relations. What appears as one artistic position unfolds, upon closer attention, as a multiplicity of worlds—interwoven, autonomous, and in constant dialogue. It is precisely within this plurality that the depth of a solo practice reveals itself.

Stepping into Lena Lindahl’s Der Wald is akin to entering the heart of the forest—an experience at once contemplative, disorienting, and expansive. Her works do not present the forest as a unified image or symbolic backdrop; instead, they articulate it as a living constellation of systems, each with its own rhythm, logic, and temporality. As in an untouched forest, where biodiversity generates resilience and complexity, Lindahl’s practice resists singularity. Each piece opens onto a distinct microcosm while remaining embedded within a larger, interconnected ecology of forms and meanings.



Lena Lindahl, Burggarten, necklace. Silver, bark, fluorite, smoky quartz, cubic zircon.



Der Wald insists on heterogeneity, interconnections, and mutual relationships between microcosmos and macrocosmos. Lindahl’s jewelry draws from the fragile intelligence of ecosystems under pressure, translating ecological processes into material narratives. The intricate tunnels of the spruce bark beetle, rendered as delicate patterns, oscillate between beauty and warning: they are at once ornamental traces and symptoms of imbalance. Each work becomes a world in itself, carrying both aesthetic autonomy and ecological urgency.

The exhibition thus operates not as a linear statement but as a “choral work,” echoing Umberto Eco’s notion in Six Walks in Fictional Woods [3]. Yet this choral quality does not dissolve authorship; rather, it expands it. Lindahl’s voice is present precisely through her ability to hold together multiple trajectories—those of materials, narratives, viewers, and contexts. A wood is a garden of forking paths, Eco writes [4]. In Der Wald, each piece offers such a path: the viewer navigates not a single story, but a shifting terrain of possible meanings.

Walking through the exhibition resembles wandering through a forest without a map. Light fractures, textures accumulate, and forms emerge as both familiar and strange. Metals, fibers, and organic materials are woven and assembled into compositions that resist closure. Each work invites a specific mode of attention, a particular pace of looking—suggesting that perception itself must adapt to the multiplicity it encounters. What unfolds is not a unified narrative, but a layered experience in which worlds overlap without collapsing into one another.



Lena Lindahl, Arionidae, Necklace worn. Silver, bark, moonstone, labradorite, fish leather. 2023



This sense of interconnection finds a poetic resonance in the writing of Thomas Tidholm [5], who evokes the invisible infrastructures of the forest: The mushrooms still have mycorrhizae, a worldwide underground network. The internet is nothing. [6]

The mycorrhizal network—vast, hidden, and essential—offers a powerful metaphor for Lindahl’s exhibition. Beneath the apparent discreteness of each piece lies a web of relations: between organisms, materials, histories, and futures. The works do not merely coexist; they communicate. Like fungal threads exchanging nutrients between trees, they sustain a circulation of meaning that exceeds any individual object.

Tidholm’s reflection on the Anthropocene further complicates this perspective: Perhaps they see us more as a large-scale but temporary phenomenon.

Here, the multiplicity of worlds extends beyond the exhibition itself, situating human experience within a broader, non-human temporality. Lindahl’s work does not center the human gaze but decentralizes it, inviting us to consider other forms of perception, other durations, other modes of existence. Each piece becomes a point of entry into a world where human presence is neither dominant nor permanent.



Lena Lindahl, Mushroom, silver ring.



Narrative, in this context, is not singular but proliferative. Lindahl’s jewelry operates as a form of narrative multiplicity: each object tells a story, yet no story is complete in itself. As Eco suggests, fiction allows us to navigate the “immensity of things” by constructing pathways through it. Similarly, Der Wald offers a space in which meaning is continuously generated through movement—between objects, between perspectives, between worlds.

The exhibition ultimately unfolds as a sensory and conceptual polyphony. It is not a static display but an evolving environment, where materiality, sound, and imagination intersect. Each piece resonates with its own quiet intensity, yet together they form a dynamic, unstable whole—less a unified composition than an ecosystem of differences.



Lena Lindahl, Catalpa, Brooch. Bark, silver, fur, opal.



In this sense, Der Wald embodies the very principle it evokes: the forest as multiplicity. A solo exhibition, here, does not reduce complexity into coherence; it sustains it. It becomes a site where distinct worlds can coexist, intersect, and remain irreducible—inviting us not to resolve them, but to dwell within their tension.



View of the Forest of Styrsö, picture taken by the Artist. 



Ultimately, Lindahl’s work calls for a mode of attention grounded in what Olga Tokarczuk names “tenderness”: a way of seeing that recognizes connection without erasing difference. To encounter Der Wald is to enter a network of fragile, interdependent worlds, to acknowledge our place within them, to listen the tender whisper of the network underground.

Nichka Marobin


Lena Lindahl
DER WALD
kunst.wirt.schaft 
14, Elisabethstrasse, Graz
14 April - 8 May 2026


Linea Melodica:
Philip Glass, The Complete Piano Etudes performed by Vanessa Wagner, 2025;
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Bachianas Brasileiras N.1, III mov. Conversa (Conversation), performed by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra Cellos, 2005.



Notes: 
[1]: Olga Tokarczuk – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach 2026. Wed. 29 Apr 2026. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2018/tokarczuk/lecture/
​[2]: Lena Lindahl https://lenalindahl.wordpress.com/
​[3]: Umberto Eco, Six Walks in fictional woods (The Charles Norton Eliot lectures 1992-93), Harvard University Press, p. 8.
​[4]: Umberto Eco, Op. Cit., ibidem;
​[5]: Thomas Tidholm, (Örebro,1943) is a Swedish children's writer, poet, playwright, photographer, translator, and musician. (via Wikipedia https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Tidholm);
​[6]: Thomas Tidholm, Jordlöparens bok - Om natur, konst och människor (The Ground Beetle's Book), Ordfront, 2020; see more on this book via here: https://www.kapprakt.se/thomas-tidholm-jordloparens-bok/

About the author

Nichka Marobin is an Italian art historian who specializes in Dutch and Flemish art history. She graduated from the Faculty of Letters at the University of Padova in Italy. In addition to her work as a writer and independent curator, she is the founder of The Morning Bark, a blo(g)azette focused on arts and humanities. On this platform, she explores a multidisciplinary approach to various topics, including fine arts, literature, fashion, and contemporary jewelry. Nichka is also the founder of THE BLUE ROOM, a hub for curatorial projects, and she collaborates with Klimt02.

Email: nichka.marobin@gmail.com