Paper cuts
Below you can meet my paper cut universes
The Paper Cut People
Welcome to my universe of paper cut people.
Through my paper cuts, I’m telling the story of the paper cut people, who are trapped deep inside the paper, before I start cutting and creating their shapes and sizes.
I can sense that the paper cut people are caught in their sadness within the paper. They are unfulfilled and have something in their lives that weighs them down. After I start cutting, they are all cut free and given the freedom to travel around in this wonderful and diverse world, we live in.
It’s a universal story about us as human beings and how we must take care of our own lives in order to figure out what makes us unhappy – and how we can find happiness. That’s why all my paper cut people smile and are happy.
The Waste Paper People
I spotted the box of wrapping paper from Christmas Eve. I mean the paper that the packages had been wrapped in.
If you read the sorting instructions, such paper must be recycled as residual waste. This means, in short, that it will be burned off.
I thought:
“Perhaps the scissors can find and release the figures that are currently in the box distributed and fragmented on a lot of colored and discarded paper?”
The scissors did what they do best and cut the limbs of these motley creatures – a glue stick completed the experiment.
Read about workshops in Denmark where I teach how participants can create new members of The Waste Paper People.
Dream Creatures
In the paper‑cut universe of Dream Creatures, I work with discarded gift wrap — paper that was meant to be sorted as residual waste and burned. I find that a shame. The paper is still a resource, something with life left in it, and I want to honour it by giving it a new beginning.
When I tear and cut into the paper, animals appear — creatures I hardly dare dream of. Animals that could live in a richer, more diverse nature if the conditions were better. Species that have never existed, yet somehow feel like beings I miss — something I long for.
In that sense, each Dream Creature is a small vision of the future.
They are suggestions of what nature could hold if we allowed it more space, more variation, more wildness. Working with the paper is both a playful exploration of colours and shapes and a quiet reflection on the nature we are losing — and the nature we can still create better conditions for, so biodiversity can grow.
Dream Creatures is a universe where something discarded becomes something valuable. Where imagination turns into action. Where we can dream of a future with more life and diversity — and perhaps even help shape it.
Read how your organisation can host a workshop where I invite participants into the world of the Dream Creatures — a place where creativity, community, and upcycling meet.
Men In Despair
The long corona shutdown in Denmark gave me plenty of time to develop my paper cuts.
During that period, a lot of new paper cuts emerged.
I call these new paper cuts Men in Despair.
Se all the Men in Despair below.
On The Move
During the corona lockdown, I – like many other people – had a lot of extra free time. This of course also gave me more time to do my paper cuts.
During that period, I felt like working on developing my paper cut expression and style.
I still wanted to cut people – but in a new way.
Here are my paper cuts from that period: On the move.
