Sustainability
Sustainability has been part of my creative practice from the beginning. Long before I had the language I use for my work today, I was drawn to second-hand materials, discarded objects and things that had lost their original purpose. Much of what I work with has been found in charity shops or given to me by friends, neighbours and people who have learnt that I am usually happy to take interesting unwanted things off their hands.
There is something I genuinely enjoy about looking at an object that has become useless to someone else and trying to see what it could become instead. Over the years this has included everything from old jewellery, textiles and leather scraps to vintage silk flowers, industrial aluminium waste and ordinary objects that were never intended to become art.
For me, sustainability is therefore not something that is added to a finished work. It affects how I look at materials in the first place, but it is also part of how I look at the world. I care about preserving what we already have – our material and cultural heritage as well as the environment – and about not putting more pressure on the planet simply because producing something new is easier.
I don't always make the most sustainable choice, and sometimes there simply isn't one, but the question is always present in the way I think and work.
Using what already exists
I am particularly drawn to materials and objects that already carry a history. An old necklace, a worn textile or a discarded object comes with traces of another life. Sometimes I know where it came from; often I don't. Either way, I enjoy working with something that already has a past and allowing it to take on another function, context or meaning.
This has gradually become closely connected to other recurring themes in my artistic practice: memory, cultural heritage, identity and transformation. Reusing a material is an environmental choice, but for me it can also be an artistic one.
Working with existing materials is not necessarily the easy option. I often don't know exactly what something is made from, how old it is or how it will react when I cut, drill, paint, glue, solder, anodise or otherwise manipulate it. A lot of my process is simply finding out, and I like that challenge. The material gets a say in what the finished work can become.
It started as a challenge
Around 2016 I began turning this way of working into a deliberate creative challenge. I asked friends to give me something they no longer wanted, and whatever they handed me had to become the starting point for a new creation.
I loved the restriction. Instead of deciding what I wanted to make and then buying the materials for it, I had to begin with what was already there and work my way out from it.
Those experiments gradually developed into a series of small collections built around repurposed materials. Some were tiny experiments consisting of only a few pieces, while others developed into much larger bodies of work.
A growing practice of repurposing
2016
Harlequin — couture hair ornaments, minimum 85% repurposed materials
Dark Chronicle — couture hair ornaments, approximately 85% repurposed materials
Dancing Dreams — fusion bellydance garments, 100% repurposed materials
2017
Secret Sanctuary — fusion bellydance costumes and accessories, 100% repurposed materials
Divine Fusion — turban headbands, 100% repurposed materials
2018
The Classics — millinery, 95–100% repurposed materials
Fragments of Birka — body chains and shoulder drapes, 100% repurposed materials
Double Trouble — festival headwear, 100% repurposed materials
Shades of Apple — jewellery, 85% repurposed materials
The Birka Collection — nine fusion bellydance costumes, 100% repurposed materials
2019
Twilight Cascade — jewellery, 100% repurposed materials
Hidden Centerpiece — piercing jewellery, 50% repurposed materials
2020
Garden of Eden — eyewear, 85% repurposed materials
Eyes in the Sky — eyewear cases, 90% repurposed materials
2021
Pastel Potpourri — bridal flower crowns
Shredded Skins — earrings, 75–85% repurposed materials
2022
Neckscapes — eyewear chains, minimum 95% repurposed materials
Looking back at these collections now, I see a lot of experimentation. The aesthetics, materials and my own way of describing what I do have changed considerably since then, but the basic idea has remained surprisingly consistent: to look at what is already there before deciding that I need something new.
Over time, however, something else happened. I stopped needing to create separate “sustainable collections”, because working with existing and repurposed materials had gradually become the norm rather than the exception in my practice.
The Birka Collection
The Birka Collection from 2018 became one of the larger early examples of this way of working. It consisted of nine fusion bellydance costumes made entirely from repurposed Scandinavian materials and was presented at the Fashion Obscura in Umeå.
At the time I was still describing myself and my work very differently from how I do today, but when I look back at Birka I can see many things that are still present in my practice: reuse, the body, cultural references, transformation and an interest in allowing existing materials to become something they were never originally intended to be.
Textiles and FireBirdFusion
Textile reuse became another important part of my work. During a trip to India in 2016 I became friends with a family working with vintage saris and brought as much fabric home to Gothenburg as my luggage would allow. That experience eventually became the starting point for FireBirdFusion and several years of working with existing textiles rather than automatically choosing newly produced fabric.
The way I describe myself has changed since then, but my relationship with textiles has remained.
The same thinking appeared in other parts of my work. In HALO Blossom, for example, headpieces were created from vintage and repurposed silk flowers that I collected over time from charity shops.
It also ran through very different aesthetic parts of my practice. Bridal pieces could be delicate and romantic, while RAW occupied a much darker and kinkier world. Both are now part of the history of my practice rather than categories that define what I do today, but they demonstrate something I still feel strongly about: sustainability does not have to come with a particular aesthetic.
Sustainability does not have to look sustainable
I don't believe that sustainable art or fashion has to look a particular way. Reuse does not have to be neutral, minimal or visibly recycled.
My work can be colourful, extravagant, romantic, kitsch, dark, humorous, kinky or completely over the top. Something found in a charity shop can become precious, strange or beautiful without having to advertise where it came from.
What matters to me is what happens before the finished object exists: what I use, what I save, what I transform and whether something that already exists can be given another life instead of automatically being replaced.
This has also meant saving my own leftovers. Vårflod, for example, grew from scraps of repurposed leather that I had kept from previous work. Instead of treating what remained from one project as waste, those pieces became the material for another.
New work from existing waste
As my practice has developed, so has the type of waste material I work with.
In recent years I have begun working extensively with aluminium sourced from industrial offcuts. Sheets and pieces that would otherwise be discarded can instead be cut, shaped, textured and anodised and become jewellery or part of a larger artistic work.
This became particularly important in Petals of Defiance, where anodised aluminium exists alongside older materials and objects carrying their own histories. Sustainability, memory, cultural heritage and inherited stories are no longer separate concerns in the work; increasingly they overlap. Using the same Sustainability Footprint principle I have applied to my work for years, I estimate Petals of Defiance to consist of approximately 98% repurposed or reclaimed material. The newly sourced physical components are limited mainly to silk thread, a brass rod and cubic zirconia.
My work with cyanotype is developing in a similar direction. I am interested in using second-hand textiles and garments and allowing an existing textile to become the starting point rather than automatically beginning with newly produced fabric.
To me these newer works belong to the same history as those early repurposing challenges, even though the results look completely different.
Transparency rather than perfection
When I originally built my webshop, I wanted to find a simple way of being transparent about the materials I use. That is why each of my product listings include a Sustainability Footprint, showing approximately how much of the material in an individual piece is reused or repurposed.
In this calculation, I count the physical components that make up the work itself. Consumable process materials such as glue, resin, pigments, paints and soldering materials are not included in the Sustainability Footprint.
The number is not always impressive. Some works are made almost entirely from repurposed materials, others contain considerably less, and some contain none at all. I prefer saying that openly to describing everything I make as sustainable simply because sustainability is important to me.
Today, however, almost everything I create is made predominantly from materials that already exist.
For me, sustainability is an ongoing practice rather than a claim of perfection.
Fashion, collaboration and keeping things in circulation
Fashion is another important part of how I think about sustainability.
I work with a network of designers, photographers, stylists, makeup artists, models and other creatives whom I trust artistically. I regularly lend existing jewellery and wearable pieces for runway presentations, photography and other projects rather than creating something new for every occasion.
I particularly enjoy seeing an existing work interpreted in a completely new way. A piece can move from one collection into another context years later and suddenly acquire a different character through the clothes, styling, person wearing it or the photographer behind the camera.
Sometimes I also create something specifically for a designer or a particular collection, but collaboration does not automatically mean producing something new.
This way of working has increasingly connected me with other creatives working within slow and sustainable fashion. Although our materials and expressions may be very different, there is often a shared interest in using what already exists and allowing materials and objects to have longer and more interesting lives.
Beyond my own studio
During the last few years my interest in sustainable fashion has also taken me into conversations beyond my own studio and immediate creative network.
In 2024 I was invited by Alice Bah Kuhnke to an event on sustainable fashion at the Swedish Parliament. People from different parts of the textile and fashion field were brought together to talk about consumption, reuse, repair and how the industry needs to change. It was also there that I first met Hanna behind Raori, which later developed into an ongoing creative collaboration.
I returned to the Swedish Parliament for the textile and fashion gathering in 2025, and again in May 2026, when the textile and fashion conference was organised by Alice Bah Kuhnke and Amanda Lind. Being invited back over several years has allowed me to follow and take part in an ongoing conversation around the transition towards a more sustainable textile and fashion industry in Sweden.
Later in 2026 I was also invited to a smaller gathering at the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås, in connection with discussions about the future of the Swedish textile and fashion industry and its transition towards more sustainable and circular ways of working.
I value being included in these conversations because they place the decisions I make in my own practice within a much larger context. The problems connected to textile production, consumption and waste obviously cannot be solved by individual artists or designers making better material choices. Structural change is needed as well.
At the same time, the larger discussion continually returns me to very practical questions in my own work: what already exists, what can be kept, what can be transformed, and what genuinely needs to be new?
Still evolving
My understanding of sustainability continues to change as my practice changes.
What began with charity-shop finds, unwanted objects and small repurposing challenges has expanded into questions about industrial waste, textiles, material histories, cultural heritage, collaboration and how artworks themselves can continue to have lives beyond the context in which they were first created.
I don't expect to arrive at a point where everything I make can be described as perfectly sustainable. I am much more interested in continuing to pay attention to the choices I make, remaining curious about the materials already around me and being transparent about the compromises that inevitably exist.
After ten years, the question that started those early experiments is still surprisingly useful:
What else could this become?
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The Sustainability footprint marking
When I decided to create this website, finding a way to communicate my mindset regarding sustainability was one of the main factors. Using already existing materials rather than newly produced has always been an obvious choice in my life since a very young age.
As I was working on creating my webshop, it felt important that my customers would know what I am about as an artist and designer, and I wanted transparency regarding the sourcing of my materials. I try to use pre-existing materials as much as possible in everything I create. It is not always possible, and it poses an artistic and technical challenge to adapt and work with materials which you are not 100% sure on how they will react with different glues, paints and manipulation techniques. Being completely self taught, I have relied on my wits, fearlessness and curiousity to figure out how things are connected and work. This not only goes for the art I create, but also everything else one needs to learn to pull off an endeavour like this, such as marketing, building a brand that is true to my core values, tax tariffs - and creating a website (which was scary, hand me a soldering iron and I am in heaven, but suggest that I should direct DSN files towards new domains...)...
I strive towards a zero waste approach in my art. Apart from the obvious environmental benefits with upcycling, repurposing and remake, to me it is a sign of respect and a way to cherish other artisans, and the history and untold stories of the items I use in my creations. It is also my hope that you will find inspiration in my work, and that with my choice to do what I can to create better conditions for the future, I in turn will inspire you to do the same.