In Her Debut, Annsofie Salomon Rescues Her Sunken Dreams
“I dumped it all in the ocean... it’s all in Copenhagen harbour somewhere. I threw out a lot of artwork, but I saved all the notes.”
Years ago as a geography and literature student, Salomon left school to find her own way. “I wanted to just write about nature, and to do that in a way that was personal as well as scientific.”
Her writing soon transformed into paintings and sculptures with the natural world as their focus. Salomon applied to the Art Academy and was rejected, retreating to her studio by the ocean to work more and re-apply the next year. Again, she was rejected.
After four applications, four rejections, and five years gone, Salomon carried her sculptures from her studio and dropped them into Copenhagen Harbour. “I think I was mad. I dumped it all in the ocean. Somehow it wasn’t working; writing about limestone, or using it.”
With five years gone and nothing to show, she shed her skin again and retreated to the countryside to work on a farm and train horses.
Yet, among the horses, songs began to surface as if they were bubbles, slowly off-gassing from the sunken CaCO3 sculptures like distilled representations. Though physically lost, the titles of the sunken artworks emerged in the songs, thereby “processing something I left behind / dropped in the ocean. Music made the whole five years make sense because I could use all the pieces” says Salomon.
It’s taken four incarnations for Annsofie Salomon to find her true expression in her debut single “Soft Dreams”. In it, she has found a place to write about her personal relationship with nature, and she has salvaged her dreams. “I threw out a lot of artwork, but I saved all the notes.” “Soft Dreams” is a collage, it’s lyrics taken from these notes.
Like her weather-worn, bouquet bearing photo, like the stories of her sculptures, and like the artist herself, “Soft Dreams” is an offering which appears to have finally washed ashore after a while lost at sea.
“Soft Dreams” also arrives with a music video made in collaboration with Philip Jørgensen. The video shows Salomon standing at the coast watching her past incarnations at sea. “I spent years trying to convince people that my art was just as modern. My salvation really came when I gave up trying to fit in and started to just be - exist - write what and how I wanted. Because somehow over time, trying to fit in, I had lost my own true language” says Salomon about her journey towards finding her true expression.
And the symbolism of the music video - the shore, where the sea is in balance with the land - implies that she feels she has found it. "I trust now that when I’m making music, writing, or painting, my body knows what to say and how to say it.”
“I’ll find the balance I’m supposed to.”
