- I saw how bent wood is really wood that has been disciplined into a cultural form. It can be seen as a metaphor for how people are pushed into norms that do not fit them, pressed into a language or removed from a language, says artist Johanna Gustafsson Fürst.

She has studied how the minority languages ​​Finnish and Meänkieli were treated and taken form in Sweden and in particular the Tornedeal. She has also collaborated with linguists at Stockholm University.

Plant breeding and language violence

The result is wood sculptures that she bent and grafted, a technique used in plant breeding where a foreign plant part is planted into a similar plant.

- It is interesting to see the graft as an illustration of how people grow into the language. How to add new features or new linguistic effects that are not always desired, says Jarmo Lainio, a professor of Finnish language at Stockholm University.

The exhibition Inaugurate the words, whip my tongue is displayed at the Accelerator art hall at Stockholm University 17 Jan - 18 Jun.