Azdora’s Temple: greetings to Eva Britt Niemi

“Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made, you have spent vast amounts of your life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never lived, as strangers you never met. The usual I we are given has all the tidy containment of the kind of character the realist novel specializes in and none of the porousness of our every waking moment, the loose threads, the strange dreams, the forgettings and misrememberings, the portions of a life lived through others’ stories, the incoherence and inconsistency, the pantheon of dei ex machina and the companionability of ghosts. There are other ways of telling.”

Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

In the Italian dialect spoken of Romagna, the word “azdora” means “she who rules”, the lady of the house. Azdora has a central feminine role, one with great authority, but never allowed to have any destructive feelings.
In early 2015, on invitation of Silvia Bottiroli, Swedish artist Markus Öhrn began working together with a group of women from Santarcangelo. Conceived as a tribute to Markus’ own grandmother Eva Britt from Lapland, the project has gone through a performative process of transformation, subverting the cultural role of the azdora. During these years, they have tattooed the audiences, ritually destroyed many household appliances, founded a metal noise band and released an LP, went on several tours, dismembered Santa and caused general choas wherever they went. They have become heroines with superpowers of mischief and transgression.
In August 2019, Azdora will travel from Santarcangelo to Lapland, performing their final ritual on Eva Britt’s grave on the anniversary of her death. You are invitied to spend a moment of solitude and reflection in a small chapel built in Eva’s honor and guarded by the formidable azdoras.