Cecilia Levy is a Swedish artist whose work is featured in the Swedish National Museum, and most recently at Stockholms New Karolinska University Hospital.
The former bookbinder uses old book pages, wheat starch paste, and a papier maché technique to create intricate, beautiful works of art. Her paper sculptures will always draw ire from book lovers who don’t want to see their favourite objects torn, cut, and glued, however it seems people just don’t buy old books to read anymore. With many secondhand stores/thrift shops not taking old books any more due to them being left unsold, we should be glad artists like Cecilia still have a use for abandoned tomes.
The artist tells us of her process on her website:
“My work includes sculptures, objects and installations, using paper from old books. I tear, cut or shred the pages and merge them together again using wheat paste and papier maché technique. The book is recreated in a way, but takes on a new form. The two-dimensional becomes three-dimensional. Work process is slow and meditative.
The traces of previous readers, the fragile paper with holes after the binding, graceful typography, old-fashioned language and a, sometimes odd, content, all attribute to what I want to express in my work. The world around us, the passage of time and memories.”
“However, tearing apart an old book is not unproblematic, it also evokes reactions, no matter how appealing the result. The book has a status, symbolizes enlightenment, is seen as something almost sacred. Simultaneously antiquarian book shops and charity organizations rarely accept old books anymore – no one buys them. There’s an interesting double nature to this.”
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