About

I’m Hanne. I am 30 years old, I live in Belgium and I graduated from the university of Ghent, where I studied Swedish language and literature, and I’m now working as an assistant at the department of Scandinavian studies. In January of 2022, I started working on a PhD project about the influence of gender on conceptions of literary quality. I live in a small town near Antwerp and I spend most of my free time reading books, cuddling with my cat, listening to podcasts, and sometimes a little painting. I think Swedish is the most beautiful language ever, and I’m obsessed with all things Swedish (and Scandinavian, for that matter). My mother tongue is Dutch, but I also speak English, Swedish, French, Italian and a little bit of Norwegian and Danish.

The goal of this blog is to share things about my life, telling stories about the places I go, giving tips about books, films and music, and maybe sharing a recipe every once in a while. A lot of these tips are Sweden-related! I also share some of my drawings and writings (mostly in Swedish). I usually write my posts in English, but sometimes I prefer Dutch or Swedish.

The name of my blog comes from a painting by a Swedish painter, Anders Österlin, called “imaginär röd”. In 2009, I went to an exposition about the CoBrA movement. It was an avant-garde movement that was founded by Asger Jorn, Christian Dotremont, Joseph Noiret, Constant, Corneille and Karel Appel in 1948. It was named after their home cities: Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. That’s where I saw this painting by Anders Österlin, a graphic designer and painter from Sweden. He was part of a group of painters in Malmö called Imaginisterna, but later on, he came in contact with the CoBrA movement. The painting was called “imaginär röd”, but the sign said “imaginary red / rouge imaginaire”. I thought that was a beautiful title, because it sounded so poetic. From then on, rougeimaginaire became my nickname on the internet, and, later on, the name of my blog.

Contact

rougeimaginaire [at] gmail.com