Ready for the next adventure? After wrapping up our visit with the children in Gili Asahan, we headed to North Kalimantan in Indonesia. And kicking off the new series of collabs are the Swedish duo Emil and Johanna, otherwise known as Tropical Scandinavia. They were paired with 8-year-old Chacha. She comes from the SDN 004 Mentarang school in the small riverside community of Pulau Sapi. The trio’s fascination with spiritualism resulted in an illustration that celebrates the unusual things in life.
OUT NOW: Tropical Scandinavia x Chacha (8)
Discovering art and each other
Johanna starts off her story by sharing that she has been creative for as long as she can remember. She’s had lots of time to herself, whether in the small village she grew up in or while living abroad in the US and Italy. This gave her the space to get stuck into lots of different creative projects.
“I remember,” she adds, “that a very early dream of mine was to have my own shop with the things I created.”
When it comes to her relationship with Emil, she recounts that they met while queuing for a nightclub. She speculates that they might have been set up by their mutual friends. But that didn’t matter, because sparks started flying immediately.
Admittedly, Emil has lots of great qualities, but Johanna distills it to: “He’s the kindest person you’ll ever meet, but at the same time he has lots of integrity and isn’t a pushover. We also share a love for making things and a curiosity of the world, both the physical and spiritual.”
After the initial encounter, a whirlwind adventure ensued. They started dating, went on a surfing trip, and moved in together a few months in. Emil, being a few years older, already had his own business in movie production and travelled a lot. These were things Johanna admired about him and aspired to.
The birth of Tropical Scandinavia
When Emil and Johanna decided to join creative forces, they named their business ‘Tropical Scandinavia’. Johanna explains: “The name Tropical Scandinavia was born when we reflected on how every year as we get close to summer, a tropical trend kicks in. But we always love colour and the tropical theme!
“Bringing bright colours and a tropical theme to a Scandinavian setting is our way of making something that will last for a longer time. That bright, joyful state - it’s something you can choose, regardless of where you are.
“Also, when we started, we’d escape Swedish winter to go somewhere tropical to surf, kind of like migratory birds. So it also reflects the way we lived our lives at the time.”
A preference for tropical weather isn’t the only thing the pair has in common. Emil and Johanna also share an interest in mysticism.
“I feel like in our culture we’re so afraid of the unknown. In many other cultures, these things are much more present, and I think we can learn from that. Acknowledging things like death can make us more grateful for this life, and becoming aware of our own ‘ghosts’ can make us act from a more conscious place.
“There will always be ‘bad’ things going on that we can’t control, but what we can control is our own energy and how we react to the world around us. The objects we see everyday affect us, so why not bring objects into our home that spark good emotions?”
And that’s the very thing that sparked the idea behind Tropical Scandinavia. Emil and Johanna decided to start a business where they create objects charged with good intentions.
Johanna goes on: “While travelling, we’re always interested in various cultures, artefacts, and totems, and how people use them to boost different feelings or abilities.
“We only have one life, our goal is to make the most of it. Sometimes, we need reminders of how we can choose our own mindset. The whole idea of Tropical Scandinavia is really to make our own version of that.”
Collabing with Chacha on a Face This illustration
Given Emil and Johanna’s exciting tropical art style and passion for spreading positive energy, we couldn’t resist reaching out for a wearable art collab. Luckily, the excitement was mutual.
Johanna shares: “We always draw together, passing sketches back and forth, and it seemed like such a fun project to work from a kid’s drawing. Also, of course, we loved that our work could help someone to get a better start in life!”
And, just like us, Emil and Johanna have a deep appreciation for children’s creativity. “We have two kids, our oldest (6) loves to draw and we often draw together. He’s such an inspiration to us. Kids are so free in their way of thinking and perceiving the world.”
Appreciating strangeness in a ‘normal’ world
For her drawing, Chacha was given the theme of ‘strange’. With this, we wanted to see the world through her perspective. After all, the concept of ‘normal’ only exists because something is considered as strange.
Chacha’s drawing includes various elements, most notably a pocong, a type of ghost in Indonesian folklore. There are also a lamp, a mountain, a tree, a flag, and a moon.
After she was finished, we discussed with Chacha what she considers ‘aneh’, or strange. Her answer was that something can be seen as strange if it’s unusual or unexpected. We were delighted to hear her perspective on such an abstract concept.
It seems that Emil and Johanna also like Chacha’s take. Johanna speculates: “As a child you live in a more magical world, and maybe that’s sometimes hard for grownups to understand. For some, perhaps the unknown can seem scary, so we dismiss it as something strange or weird. But seeing a ghost as a child is maybe not that strange, because you haven’t yet been taught that they don’t exist.”
When it comes to the concept of ‘normal’, Johanna says: “For us, normal is the opposite of the life we aspire to live. We start imagining things in our heads and then we try to make it reality. Strange things represent the magic in life, and opening the door to that magic gives us a fuller life.
“I think Einstein said it best - ‘There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.’”
Coming up with the final illustration
When creating the illustration, Emil and Johanna followed a well-established routine:
“We did it like we always do, sending sketches back and forth between us, drawing first by hand. When we came up with the final drawing, we scanned it to the computer and started working with colours. I think we actually kept most of the elements, but moved them around a bit.”
When it came to the subject matter of the illustration, they loved that Chacha drew inspiration from the spiritual world. “Having access to it makes your life so much more interesting and fun, and I’m so glad we share that with Chacha.”
Encountering something strange in the real world
After Chacha was finished with her drawing, we asked her if she had any experiences with ghosts or the supernatural. She explained that she once saw a hantu, or a ghost, on her way back from a religious service. This experience sparked her interest in the supernatural.
When hearing this story, Johanna responds: “I do have a feeling that there is so much more going on than we see. For example, I often send my mom a text and before I press send I receive one from her about the same thing. I also feel that my much loved grandmother who passed away a couple years ago is not completely ‘gone’. I sometimes have this sense that she is with me.”
After these invigorating chats with Chacha and Emil and Johanna, we’re left with lots to ponder about mysticism, and the supernatural. And from what we hear, Emil and Johanna also have some takeaways from this experience.
“We had a lot of fun making the drawing, and we loved working with someone else’s idea. We would have never been able to come up with this design ourselves. Something that was also really nice was that our son was with us when we started the drawing. He also made his own version of it and we started talking about ghosts and the supernatural.”
And to finish up, Emil and Johanna have a final message for their collab partner: “Keep creating and keep seeing the magic in life!”
OUT NOW: Tropical Scandinavia x Chacha (8)