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The Car is NO Ordinary Car. Long before it started to elope all by itself??? It made its spiritual presence and ideas known by manifesting in the artist’s kitchen on the kitchen counter after she returned from a prolonged trip and her husband and guests had turned the kitchen into a man cave!
Read three chapter of stories about the car here:
Enclosure Fathom Part 2: Limited Edition: The Car – Part 1 – Vanitas. – SHARM.T.P (artshowroom.org)
The art collectors first have to recognize themselves from some upcoming clues on Instagram starting on 16 October 2021. The auction is a game of questions and each answer can give a collector the edge to bid at the auction. The rules are not simple and who ends up with the car as well. It may decide itself, to disappear again, the moment the new owner has it in his or her possession. The artist takes zero responsibility for its movements. (Giggle)! Keep your eyes peeled for the clues coming up.
DAY 1: 02/12/2021 – Please fill in the puzzle – and keep the answers ready: the answers will allow you to bid on the sparewheel of the car.
Artist Notes:
Nisser/n On A Windowsill
According to tradition, the nisse lives in the houses and barns of the farmstead, and secretly acts as their guardian. If treated well, they protect the family and animals from evil and misfortune, and may also aid the chores and farm work. However, they are known to be short tempered, especially when offended. Once insulted, they will usually play tricks, steal items and even maim or kill livestock.
The nisse/tomte was often imagined as a small, elderly man (size varies from a few inches to about half the height of an adult man), often with a full beard; dressed in the traditional farmer garb, consisting of a pull-over woolen tunic belted at the waist and knee breeches with stockings. This was still the common male dress in rural Scandinavia in the 17th century, giving an indication of when the idea of the nisse spread. However, there are also folktales where he is believed to be a shapeshifter able to take a shape far larger than an adult man, and other tales where the nisse is believed to have a single, Cyclopean eye. In modern Denmark, nisser are often seen as beardless, wearing grey and red woolens with a red cap. Since nisser are thought to be skilled in illusions and sometimes able to make themselves invisible, one was unlikely to get more than brief glimpses of him no matter what he looked like.
Norwegian folklore states that he has four fingers, and sometimes with pointed ears and eyes reflecting light in the dark, like those of a cat.
The tradition of nisse/tomte is also associated with Christmas (Swedish: Jultomten, Danish: Julemanden, julenissen, Norwegian: Julenissen or Finnish: Joulutonttu.) The tomte is accompanied by another mythological creature: the Yule goat (Julbocken). The pair appear on Christmas Eve, knocking on the doors of people’s homes, handing out presents.
The nisse will deliver gifts at the door, in accordance with the modern-day tradition of the visiting Santa Claus, enters homes to hand out presents. The tomte/nisse is also commonly seen with a pig, another popular Christmas symbol in Scandinavia, probably related to fertility and their role as guardians of the farmstead. It is customary to leave behind a bowl of porridge with butter for the tomte/nisse, in gratitude for the services rendered.
Nisse on Christmas Card (1885)
In the 1840s the farm’s nisse became the bearer of Christmas presents in Denmark, and was then called julenisse (Yule Nisse). In 1881, the Swedish magazine Ny Illustrerad Tidning published Viktor Rydberg’s poem “Tomten”, where the tomte is alone awake in the cold Christmas night, pondering the mysteries of life and death. This poem featured the first painting by Jenny Nyström of this traditional Swedish mythical character which she turned into the white-bearded, red-capped friendly figure associated with Christmas ever since. Shortly afterwards, and obviously influenced by the emerging Father Christmas traditions as well as the new Danish tradition, a variant of the nisse/tomte, called the jultomte in Sweden and julenisse in Norway, started bringing the Christmas presents in Sweden and Norway, instead of the traditional julbock (Yule Goat).
Gradually, commercialism has made him look more and more like the American Santa Claus, but the Swedish jultomte, the Norwegian julenisse, the Danish julemand and the Finnish joulupukki (in Finland he is still called the Yule Goat, although his animal features have disappeared) still has features and traditions that are rooted in the local culture. He doesn’t live on the North Pole, but perhaps in a forest nearby, or in Denmark he lives on Greenland, and in Finland he lives in Lapland; he doesn’t come down the chimney at night, but through the front door, delivering the presents directly to the children, just like the Yule Goat did; he is not overweight; and even if he nowadays sometimes rides in a sleigh drawn by reindeer, instead of just walking around with his sack, his reindeer don’t fly — and in Sweden, Denmark and Norway some still put out a bowl of porridge for him on Christmas Eve. He is still often pictured on Christmas cards and house and garden decorations as the little man of Jenny Nyström’s imagination, often with a horse or cat, or riding on a goat or in a sled pulled by a goat, and for many people the idea of the farm tomte still lives on, if only in the imagination and literature.
The use of the word tomte in Swedish is now somewhat ambiguous, but often when one speaks of jultomten (definite article) or tomten (definite article) one is referring to the more modern version, while if one speaks of tomtar (plural) or tomtarna (plural, definite article) one could also likely be referring to the more traditional tomtar. The traditional word tomte lives on in an idiom, referring to the human caretaker of a property (hustomten), as well as referring to someone in one’s building who mysteriously does someone a favour, such as hanging up one’s laundry. A person might also wish for a little hustomte to tidy up for them. A tomte stars in one of author Jan Brett’s children’s stories, Hedgie’s Surprise.
Nisser/tomte often appear in Christmas calendar TV series and other modern fiction. In some versions the tomte are portrayed as very small; in others they are human-sized. The nisse usually exist hidden from humans and are often able to use magic.
Garden gnome
The appearance traditionally ascribed to a nisse or tomte resembles that of the garden gnome figurine for outdoors, which are in turn, also called trädgårdstomte in Swedish, havenisse in Danish, hagenisse in Norwegian and puutarhatonttu in Finnish.
References:
Christmascard: By Nasjonalbiblioteket from Norway – Glædelig Jul, 1885Uploaded by Anne-Sophie Ofrim, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19044871