I Wanted My Body to Be a Garden

by Jenny Linnea Hagström

I Wanted My Body to Be a Garden is an illustration of the wild inner landscape that emerges when the body is broken down by illness. The human being is isolated into two separate entities: a living self and a broken body, both strong and fragile at the same time. The limitations of the body, rather than those of the room, determine what the reality will look like. When the physical space shrinks claustrophobically, the self takes refuge in a wider sensory space. The embroideries in this exhibition are the voice of this inner self, spoken through that inner landscape, made into stitches on fabric.

A small illustration of a corvid bird made with white stitch-like strokes and crosses.

I Wanted My Body to be a Garden

I wanted my body to be a garden

In my skin

like it was the earth itself

seeds would germinate after the rain

On every millimetre of me

would grow motherwort

snapdragon

and camomile

and in every crease of my body

I wanted honeysuckle to root

with heavy scents in the evenings

I wanted my body to be a garden

But it became a wasteland

where nettles suffocated the twinflowers

and the hogweed grew strong over dried-out peonies

II

Among hellebore and wormwood

I hide the sorrows of my hands

bury the weariness of my limbs

My lips whisper pale verses

for the seeds of spring to grow

but the words that come out of my mouth are heavy

and already burnt with the stormfelled trees

in the spring fire

I have a small room in spacetime

where I hide from the unimaginable

the eternal existence

III

Behind the stone walls of my bedroom I tie

a wreath of henbane and foxglove

I carry it deep in my heart for days to come

Below the cover I weed the thistles

from the rows of nightshade

I put compost on the blackberry bushes

When I fall asleep I am already halfway out

on the field

where the hogweed blooms side by side with

meadowsweet and timothy

and when I wake up again

my sheets are grey and soiled

and my feet sore and full of mud

IV

Nowhere could I find what I wanted to know

before the weed grew over my head

Every step I take is too short

and time

merciless and mouldering

In the shadow of bark and

overblown lilies

I can see time soundlessly passing by

I must shut my eyes

pretend like nothing

and appear indifferent to the strangled noise

of overgrown seedlings

V

I wanted my body to be a garden

An illustration of a ground-elder flower standing on a white line made with stitch-like strokes.

Vierge Moderne

I am not a woman. I am a neuter.

I am a child, a squire and an audacious decision,

I am a laughing ray of a scarlet sun... I am a net for all ravenous fish,

I am a toast to the honour of all women,

I am a step towards chance and destruction,

I am a dart in freedom and self...

I am the whispering of blood in the ear of man,

I am an ague of soul, a craving and denial of the flesh,

I am an entrance sign to new paradises.

I am a flame, seeking and jaunty,

I am a water, deep but bold up to the knees,

I am fire and water in honest context on free terms...

Edith Södergran, Dikter, 1916

An illustration of a vine with spiky henbane leaves made with white stitch-like strokes.

From Ashes

I

Hold this body gently

for it exists in another universe,

another dimension,

than the one you can see

in the middle of the room, a storm,

in the eye of the storm

my feverish skin and the fire that burns

underneath it

Piece by piece I am being unravelled

like an old knitted jumper,

row by row of my self

until like a homoeopathic dose

only the memory of me remains

among cracks

a net of cavities

until I crumble

collapse in a heap of Phoenix ash

II

I aged thirty years over a winter

and though all the years were still unlived

my body was heavy and weary

and I realised

how fragile a life can be

III

I have learned

that even hell has its levels of severity

and even though my body screams for air

and my very bones ache and hurt

I’ve only bordered on the first circle

of Infernos nine

IV

Hold me while my illness flares

while it claws and pierces me

I’ve been there before

Let me fall asleep in your arms

pretend that today is a day like all others

and that the wolf in my bloodstream

never had caught up with me

Let us live like tomorrow doesn't exist,

like all the days were a string of pearls,

a prism that refracts light

in all the colours of the rainbow

V

When I leave the doors of Hell behind

I am standing naked

in a thicket of blackberry bushes

with my shoulders full of thorns,

and everything that was me

is relentlessly dissolved in a black hole

that devours everything

in its vicinity

VI

Blow me solid

take these burning remains out of the fire

and stroke my living shell to invisibility

take away my grieving anxiety

leech me and let the wind in my rooms bleed out.

Gather my ashes

from the piles of the storm.

VII

Who am I

when all that I knew to be me

has burned out in the fire that stopped time,

my existence as unforgiving as a thunderstorm in January

Will I rise again

like the bird that, born from ashes,

shakes its wings,

and takes off towards a black night sky

Maybe I explode

in a supernova of colours

before I fall to earth again

To our smallest components

we are all stardust

An illustration of a vine with leaves that grow in pairs, made with white stitch-like strokes.

Linnaea Borealis

Lay me naked in the ground

with twinflowers in my chest

Cover me slowly

until only my head is bare

Leave me in the darkness,

for earth to pull out that which consumes me,

thaw the frost around my limbs

Drops of spring rain find their way around

the boundaries of my body

and soaks me like a seed left

from the flowering of summer

I germinate and from my broken body

another one grows

I do not shed my skin but my life.

I have an underground will to take care of

between heavy roots and dark burrows

When I rise from the pit

where the mould of my body remains

like a memory

I will shake the soil from my hair

and feel how the weight of it

still caresses my skin

the night has never been

and this morning is just one of several others

I don’t need wings

I reach Andromeda

from my place on earth

My Body a Laughing Chamber

My body

a laughing chamber

a silly house under my skin

with dizzying depths

winding pathways

deforming mirrors

Through my rooms

I walk slowly

and on guard

Behind every door a surprise

I try to chart

and understand

and yet

the next room

is nothing I could have ever imagined

Dark corridors wait

behind every bend

mirrors to get lost in

mazes

that lead me back to where I started

on the edge of the event horizon

gazing down into the nothingness

experience time within

and time without

simultaneously

Norns

I bore a child

I was a rift in the earth

for his naked body to be born from

My womb a burrow

surrounded by long crawling roots

the placenta a net of mycelium

keeping him alive

until I slowly broke his peace

birthing him

to life above ground

I bore a child

he was flesh of my flesh and the reddest

blood

of my blood

and I bore a mother

out of the birth pangs

we were both born

like butterflies shedding their pupae

when the ones we had been before

had died in the waves of constrictions

I: a newborn mother with a child at my breast

In the silence after the tremors of the birth

I prayed to the Norns

to spin his threads strong

to weave his days fine and numerous

and to let his roots grow deep into the earth

tough and hardy

I bore a child

and from that first morning

he held my heart

in his small hands

An illustration of a vine with round-edged leaves that grow in pairs, made with white stitch-like strokes.

Woodbine and Lupine

You ask me

where we belong

my answer is

I am the earth

I carry you

within

and one day

you and I will once again

become one

I nurse you

from all the small streams

of my surface

every one of my drops

keeps you alive

and my full breasts

will forever be yours

to suckle

From my bosom

grows woodbine and lupine

timothy

and sage

and I shall nurture you

for as long as you live

An illustration of a vine with round-edged leaves on both sides of the vine, made with white stitch-like strokes.

Artificial Respiration

Out of necessity

I give myself

artificial respiration

for my breast

to fill up with oxygen

from without

for my skin

to feel the warmth and the light

from the sun

and for my heart

to circulate

the reddest blood

possible

a fluid

glimmering

golden

and full of life

for this broken shadow

of a body

A Band-aid on an Ulcer

All the time I thought

it was my heart

being fragile

that my ghosts

had finally caught up with me

even though I’d seen them

lurching in the distance

and that there was a reason

that I could get hold of

if I reached deep enough

And yet there was

this thing

this something

tearing from within

inside my tissues

inside my bloodstream

that poisoned

and pulled

and cut

and all my efforts

trying to find the answer

in my heart

was nothing but a band-aid

on an ulcer

and the only thing that really

soothes

is knowing that nothing I could do

would ever have been enough

An illustration of a vine with leaves on both sides of the vine, one leaf falling away, made with white stitch-like strokes.

Kyllikki

I

I am Lilith

You can try to bind me

but I walk my own paths

I am the first woman

the one you will always long for

the one you will always want to come back to

I have my free will

my body was made from the dark soil of the earth

I can not be tamed

I leave your paradise

rising on strong winds

travel in thermal currents

in search of my own place

They say I kill children

that I ride you like the mare

they only want to blacken my name

make us all into witches

II

I am Kyllikki

Silver does not tempt me

I despise gold

You can tie my body

but you cannot bind my soul

You will regret that you took me by force

You saw my beauty

wanted to own me like a piece of jewellery

On the bottom of your sleigh

bound to hands and feet

I became yours

what choice did I have

Bitterly you came to regret it

You could take my body

but my will was my own

and you could not live with it

III

I am Skuld

You find me at the roots of the Ash,

by the water of fortune

I reign over life

with threads slowly spun

the future is mine to weave

My name is inevitable

you cannot escape the fate I give you

IV

I am Medusa

My beauty frightens you

and you stand frozen

before my gaze

Raped

I was the one punished

while he walked free

My rage is deadly

I take revenge

on any man

who dares to look me in the eyes

and you want my head

separated from my body

to no longer have to fear my anger

V

I am Eve

I devour the apples of Eden

like a wolf

lays about its prey

You wanted me ignorant

an adornment

in your patriarchal garden

but I sought the tree,

I found the fruit

and you vilify me

Your poor masculinity

can never forgive me

for the knowledge

I revelled in

VI

I am Lilith

I am Kyllikki

I am Skuld

I am Medusa

I am Eve

I am Gaia, Earth, the Mother

I am all women

despised

disdained

raped

I walk, unyielding,

pass the stake where you want to burn me

because my existence

threatens

your vanity

An illustration of a vine with thin branches on both sides, made with white stitch-like strokes.

Shedding

I

I shed my skin

so many times

wanting the skin I changed into

to fit better

into the corridors

wanting it to become one

with the rooms

And although it soon stuck

it rubbed

and itched

and below it I still heard a voice

singing softly

about another skin

the one I could hardly remember

anymore

II

If you saw me then

you might have thought

that you could see who I was

but everything you saw

was a refraction

a bending of the light around me

(through me)

and if you had looked close enough

you would have seen

that I was permeable

III

I hid my fragility

deep inside of me

and covered my ears

when it rammed the walls

I kept it hidden

did not let anyone

into the room

where it lay

writhing like a snake

thrashing over the floor

If

sometimes

it made it to the surface

I took it firmly in my hand

and put it back

within

I did not acknowledge it

and yet it was

my largest fear

until the day it refused to be kept anymore

and I reluctantly let go of the door

just a little

IV

Like a sweet pea it soon grew out of all bounds

and when the first flower

burst into bloom

I wasn’t afraid anymore

An illustration of a vine with leaves on both sides, two of the leaves dripping water, made with white stitch-like strokes.

About the Exhibition

I Wanted My Body to Be a Garden by Jenny Linnea Hagström is a series of 11 embroideries and poems. Each embroidered artwork was hand-embroidered with needle and thread, using mercerised cotton yarn on repurposed cotton fabric and embellished with beads, buttons, snaps, chain, and safety pins. Both the poems and embroidered artworks were born from the feelings created as illness consumed Jenny's life.

‘During my most severe time of illness, there was a discrepancy between my self and my body. I was a living self in an unable, confining body, my own being; a claustrophobic cage. I spent most of my days lying down as I could not be upright for more than a few minutes at a time, and I couldn't do most of the things I liked to do anymore. I had started embroidering a few years earlier, and then I realised that I could embroider in bed and on the sofa, lying down with a pillow supporting the fabric. So I would lie in bed, making pictures with needle and thread, and these pictures would become a way to communicate: my unconscious self speaking to my conscious self, and me speaking to an imagined future audience. At first the embroideries were mostly of torsos, half-bodies unable to communicate and unable to move autonomously, because that was how I saw my body at the time. When I later started to get better and started to heal the discrepancy, my self and body started to melt together again, and I gave the embroideries faces and bodies; broken and mended but still there. These embroideries and poems are dark illustrations of living a half-life, feeling like dying, and being somewhat put together again. The same person, but at the same time someone completely different.
One of the things I miss the most since getting severely ill is being able to spend time in wild nature: walking in the forest, climbing hills, swimming in the sea. A small portion of this is available to me in my garden, and it is such an important part of my life since I got somewhat better and am able to work in my garden to an extent. This is where I find calm and solace, and it is also a part of a wild inner landscape I keep, where the birds give me the wings I lack myself, and the flora reminds me that everything is part of the same wild nature; everything is connected. Thus, they play an important role in my art as well.’
— Jenny Linnea Hagström, 2026

The collection, which originally featured only 10 embroideries, was first exhibited at the Åland Art Museum (Ålands konstmuseum) between September and November 2025, under its original Swedish name Min kropp skulle vara en trädgård.

This online exhibition features the original 10 embroideries, created between 2017 and 2025, as well as an additional embroidery created in 2026 titled Nettles and Hogweed. This exhibition also features 11 poems that accompany each embroidered artwork; 10 of the poems featured in the exhibition are Jenny's originals written between 2019 and 2021, and edited and translated from their original Swedish for this exhibition in 2026. The other poem featured, Vierge Moderne, was written by Finnish poet Edith Södergran in 1916. This poem was selected for the exhibition as it inspired Jenny to create her embroidery of the same title in 2025.

Graphics, by Lily Lime, were created to accompany this exhibition and act as dividers for each set of poem and embroidery. The graphics take direct inspiration from their coinciding embroidered artwork, and were made to mimic embroidery stitches.

The artworks' titles are as follows:

Exhibition curated by Lily Lime