Mobilitas Mori

Description

Artist Notes

Mobilitas Mori is a mixed-media reflection on movement as both privilege and vulnerability. Constructed from my own boarding passes and tickets thorugh a decade and a half the work uses the language of mobility to show impermanence, erasure, and mortality. The title reconfigures memento mori into a condition of motion: to move is also to decay, to cross is also to disappear. Black painted bands interrupt the surface, obscuring names, numbers, and destinations. These gestures function as acts of censorship and forgetting, echoing how systems of travel reduce individuals to data while simultaneously denying access, visibility, or permanence. A dense, fractured diagonal form cuts through the ordered grid, suggesting rupture, an irreversible moment. This moment has become my daily moment. Red pigment bleeds downward, evoking bodily fragility and the inevitability of loss. Gravity becomes a collaborator, reinforcing time’s irreversible pull. Mobilitas Mori is a tension between freedom and finitude.

Preservation Notes

MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION Mobilitas Mori is a physical work: a mixed-media painting and collage on linen canvas, not a digital-native piece. The record describes acrylics and carbons worked on a linen canvas support, with the artist's own boarding passes and travel tickets (EU, 5–15 years old) collaged onto the surface using polymer adhesive and finished with a polymer-based clear coat sealant. The description records black painted bands that interrupt and obscure printed names, numbers and destinations, a fractured diagonal form cutting through the ordered grid of documents, and red pigment running downward across the surface. Dimensions are recorded as 46 cm high by 38 cm wide; no depth is recorded. The archivist's earlier observation is retained: the piece is fresh and new — acrylics and carbons on linen canvas, collaged tickets and boarding passes with polymer adhesives, layered and cohesive — currently residing at the artist's studio in Stockholm, Sweden. CONSERVATION REQUIREMENTS As a linen canvas support carrying acrylic and a polymer sealant, the painted structure should be stable. Keep the work in stable relative humidity and away from direct sunlight. Dust with a soft dry brush only. Do not use solvents on the sealed acrylic surface. Support the stretcher when handling and never carry the work by its upper member alone. The work also incorporates paper ephemera — boarding passes and travel tickets. These are acidic commercial stocks never intended to last, and they will continue to deteriorate (yellowing, embrittlement, ink and thermal-print fading) even beneath the polymer sealant. Assessment by a paper conservator is recommended, together with protection from light, moisture and oxygen; where any ephemera remain unsealed or exposed, encapsulation should be considered. Any lifting edges at collage overlaps must be consolidated before handling, transport or framing. In all cases UV-filtering glazing is recommended. The saturated reds, yellows and oranges — here principally the poppy-red passages bleeding down the surface — are the passages most at risk of fading. DIGITAL RECORD The original capture was scanned in Sweden as a TIFF master in high, medium and low resolution variants. Those masters are held outside this archive; the file uploaded here is a converted derivative. CURRENT ASSET: JPEG, 1133 x 1374 pixels, 682 KB. Maximum reproduction size at 300 DPI is 4.6 inches on the long edge. Resolution grade: LOW. WARNING: This file is a low-resolution derivative and is inadequate for print reproduction or detailed study. The high-resolution TIFF master must be sourced and uploaded before this work is sold, printed, or reproduced. Sanity accepts TIFF uploads directly, so no conversion is required. The high-resolution TIFF master should be uploaded as the primary image, with the medium and low resolution variants retained in the gallery field. The gallery field is currently unused on this record, so the medium and low resolution variants are not stored anywhere in this archive. OUTSTANDING VERIFICATION 1. Depth is not recorded in the dimensions field. A collaged and sealed surface has measurable build-up, and depth should be measured and entered. 2. The record does not state whether the linen canvas is stretched over a stretcher, mounted on a board, or unmounted. This determines handling and framing method and requires physical examination to resolve. 3. The materials entry inherited a fragment reading "EU -" before the acrylics. It has been read as a geographic qualifier for the boarding passes and tickets; this should be confirmed with the artist. 4. The medium field states "Mixed media on canvas" while the description centres on collaged paper boarding passes and tickets. The support is recorded as canvas and the ephemera as surface elements, but this canvas-versus-paper distinction must be confirmed by physical examination, because a canvas support and a paper support require different treatment. 5. The date range given for the collaged documents ("5-15 years old") is relative rather than absolute. Actual issue dates should be recorded so the ephemera can be dated independently of the yearCreated value of 2026.

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