STRANGE FRUIT: On Grids, Etching, and Mythic Resonance
Photo of various stages of the life of a Pomegranate (2018-2020) by Camilla Howalt
In 2020, I became preoccupied with the challenge of drawing a convex grid - one that could evoke both topological depth and curvature - emerging from a traditionally flat, two-dimensional Euclidean plane. I wanted to construct something that moved beyond the standard X and Y axis: a spatial field that bent into the third dimension, something more like an egg than a sphere.
The mathematics of it quickly became overwhelming. I had to surrender the exactitude I initially sought. Eventually, I repurposed an already drawn spherical grid, warping and pulling it into new formations. This became the foundational structure of STRANGE FRUIT 1–3 - a triptych of oval works, each 80 x 110 cm, with the grid hand-drawn and then burnt into wood with a penburner.
This grid - the first mark-making gesture—acts as both structure and metaphor. It grounds the surface, but also opens the field: to constellations, to psycho-geographies, to metaphysical mapping. It pays quiet homage to a more archaic, tactile kind of inscription. Not graffiti in its contemporary sense, but scrafitti - the scratched marks of the ancient world, often left anonymously in stone, clay, or wood. It recalls the intimate violence of carving a name into the bark of a tree, or the door of a nightclub stall: memory-work done through abrasion, persistence, and desire.
In that same spirit, this work holds a kind of inner scaffolding. One of its hidden references is the ancient Sumerian house plan - a residence with a central courtyard - etched into clay 5,000 years ago and then fired. There’s something ritualistic about burning a structure into a surface, whether architectural or symbolic. The act of marking as a form of meaning-making, a way of making space for the self.
But this work doesn’t live only in structure. It leans into myth, sensuality, grief. The grid is overlaid with photographic transfers of a pomegranate in various stages of bloom. The fruit is lush, but also loaded. Persephone’s fruit. A symbol of descent and return, of entanglement. To eat the seeds is to bind yourself—to knowledge, to darkness, to time. It is also, of course, the fruit of Strange Fruit - of hanging bodies and histories that burn through any easy reading of beauty.
Strange Fruit 2020 by Camilla Howalt
When I laid out the spherical grid, I noticed something else: the fruits mostly appear in the southern part of the plane. This spatial logic - intuitive at first - began to mirror other systems I’ve long been attuned to. In one reading, the positioning echoes the planetary layout in my own horoscope, where much of the activity lies below the midline. In another, the sphere tips into a geographical axis: fruit hanging in the south, a gesture toward the African continent. And in yet another - perhaps the most painful - the title Strange Fruit returns us to the image of bodies hanging from trees in the American South, a history Billie Holiday sang into collective consciousness. These are all constellations I didn’t fully plan, but found myself inside of. They assert themselves softly, insistently, as if the work knew something before I did.
The triptych is not yet finished. There are leaves still to come - gold and green - that will curl and settle into the composition like a last breath or a final gesture. They’ve been delayed. Perhaps because I’m still listening for where they want to go. The work resists completion. It continues to unfold meaning as I return to it, as if it too is governed by a seasonal rhythm. A cycle of blooming, burning, bearing fruit.
What follows below is a gathering of sketches, images, fragments. They accompanied me through the process and reflect the kind of layering that can’t always be seen in the final pieces. This work is about descent, after all. About what lies below the surface. And about returning - not with answers, but with the shape of something forming.
In continuous research,
Camilla
