Guardian Angels

2023

Excerpt from ‘The Gods, The Dishes, The Paycheck’, published in connection with Storage of the Gods:

“The angel is a very interesting figure. Represented in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and many other religions, the angel is a link between the earthly and the divine, a messenger and sometimes a protector. When it first occurred to me that the concept of angels could be interesting to work with, I immediately rejected the idea, feeling it would be silly. But the more I learned about the history of angels, the more relevant it seemed. And I think it’s when there’s something at stake, some resistance and doubt, that the artworks become genuinely interesting. 

In my research, I spoke with people from different religious backgrounds to gain a better understanding of the concept of belief. Most societies have some sort of religion at their core, so I was interested in what we in North European secular societies might be missing, not having a religious superstructure to lean into. 

This led me back to the angels. More specifically, how angels can express some of the longings in our everyday life. I organized workshops where I asked each participant to describe a guardian angel. This could be an angel they felt was missing in their lives, one they wished they had, or one they felt the presence of. It could be a guardian angel for themselves, someone they knew, or even for an idea, an object, a mood — any phenomena. The descriptions of angels poured in, and by the end of the research I had collected over 300 of them. I sifted through this amazing and heart-touching material, identifying recurring themes and topics.” – Hannah Toticki

Photo: David Stjernholm and Anne Mie Bak