Tricoter la mer (Knitting the Sea), 2015 – ongoing

Knitted textile installation, approximately 4.5 m from the first to the current row; current row approximately 10 m long. Variable dimensions.

Tricoter la mer is an ongoing knitted work begun in 2015. Made in continuous stocking stitch and never unravelled or corrected. Each new section preserves the accumulated time, irregularities and physical limits of the gesture.

The work begins from an impossible task: to knit the sea. Its central question is not whether the task can be completed, but what it means to begin and continue an undertaking known in advance to be unachievable. Repetition and duration transform a modest domestic action into a territory, while long-term commitment places persistence and failure at the centre of the work.

Studio View, Tricoter la mer, Vansbro, 2020. Photo © Benny Andersson

Research observations

As Tricoter la mer expands, the task changes in nature. A row that initially required approximately one hour now takes around ten. It can no longer function as a perceptible unit of progress, leaving the individual stitch as the only immediate temporal measure.

The growing scale of the work therefore produces an inverse contraction of lived experience: the undertaking becomes monumental, while the action available to the body becomes increasingly minute and fragmented. This structure brings the work into relation with repetitive and divided labour, in which the worker’s gesture becomes progressively detached from the totality it contributes to producing.

Yet the constraint is not externally imposed. I established the protocol myself and continue to submit my practice to it. A freely chosen undertaking gradually becomes an autonomous structure, strengthened by the time and labour already invested in it. The work therefore tests how commitment can shift into dependency, and how persistence may coexist with freedom, alienation, absurdity and necessity.

Tricoter la mer, 2015–ongoing. Details of the knitted surface and working process; lower left: the artist’s hands continuing the work. Photos © Benny Andersson

Tricoter la mer, 2015–ongoing. The work at successive stages of its development, showing the increasing scale of the knitted surface over time. Photos © Benny Andersson