In past exhibitions, “Kvinnorna” and “Darlings”, artist Helén Svensson, together with curator Ashik Zaman, looked toward pioneering women in contemporary art history—Judy Chicago, Louise Nevelson, Carmen Herrera, Lenore Tawney, Ruth Asawa and Lygia Clark—to find windows to new possibilities within Helén’s artistic practice. Her new exhibition, “Footnotes”, summarizes several years of work as an artist-curator pair in a spatial installation that carries the characteristics defining a very specific working framework that has emerged to the fore. In this interview, the collaborators share more about their unconventional but thought-provoking collaboration.
You’ve often described as being interested in doing work consisting of simple gestures that to some extent anyone can do, but where it is the continuous repeating of the same according to a certain system or framework that leads to meticulous orchestrations where patience has been currency. Why is that?
The small movements in the repetition of a simple form in a certain system are for me a way of embracing and getting into the material. It is a process of understanding its possibilities. The slow repetition of the simple form also becomes a kind of time document and is an attempt to convey to the visitors that even the most banal thing can be attributed a value.
You graduated from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in the end of the 90s. What are some ways in which the art scene has changed its views and gaze on art and art-making?
What immediately comes to mind is our close collaboration as artist and curator. That type of collaboration didn’t exist back then. Curatorship training came a few years after I graduated from art school. When the newly graduated curators then sought out artists to collaborate with, they chose those who were newly graduated and who were often of the same generation as the curator.
We started collaborating as artist and curator on a whim that we would equally be able to challenge each other creatively and find new ground to work on. It’s been very rewarding. We’ve found our matrix, but it’s not necessarily the most conventional way to work. It feels like an honest and very potent way nevertheless. What’s been the hardest and what’s been the easiest way about working so closely with a curator?
I was surprised that it worked so well right away. My working process tended to become more and more reduced, so in our collaboration as artist and curator there was room to expand the framework together. That was probably one reason why our work together was so uncomplicated. When we started our collaboration, we were new to each other and of course there was a fear that the artist’s self would disappear, but because we had an honest and respectful relationship with each other’s practices from the beginning, and it was a welcoming and inspiring process, we quickly found a way that worked.
Your three recent exhibitions have all conceptually looked to seminal figures in contemporary art history for kinships. What is it that can be so profound about looking back this way through the art you are making today?
In their artistry I have found a dialogue between their work and mine, which for me has led to a clearer picture and understanding of my own work. A greater humility: that my work is not unique but more like an echo of what has been. That you are part of a context and not in an isolated space.
The women who have been the subject of our homage and attention are truly inspiring: Carmen Herrera, Lygia Clark, Ruth Asawa, Louise Nevelson, Lenore Tawney and Judy Chicago. What are some things you would like to share about them?
They are artists who were all significant and innovative in their time but not always visible in the historiography. The major institutions have in recent years tried to correct this by presenting solo exhibitions with several of them, but unfortunately often after their passing.
The exhibition “Footnotes” summarizes what is now an “IMP”: an intention, a method and a process. Let’s elaborate.
The intention is to turn to contemporary art history and use kinships found therein to find windows into new opportunities in my own artistic practice, but also, while doing so, to make these kinships visible. Part of that intention is the reminder that an artist too can impact how art history is remembered and observed. The method is our jointly studying works by these chosen seminal figures and eventually looking at very specific works of theirs and seeing how they can inspire new works for me to make. I know my own work, you’re very perceptive about my work, and we apply that to looking at works by artists from before that resonate with mine. Sometimes the specific ideas stem directly from you and then I bring them to my studio and start trying them out materially. In the process we remain in close dialogue, updating the ideas and making the edits on the sketches and works in progress until they’ve finally found their form and are materialized by me in the studio.
What can the audience expect to see in “Footnotes” in the exhibition space?
In the exhibition room you will be able to see a work consisting of two objects. Our idea with the work is that you should be able to see traces of my historical art practice and also find threads to the female pioneers we have chosen to highlight. The footnote is an attempt to demonstrate the dialogue between my work, the curator and the women.
Helén Svensson & Ashik Zaman photographed by Anna Drvnik
What comes after “Footnotes”?
“Footnotes” is the third exhibition in a little over a year, and working on this project has started a process of many ideas that I want to test. I will continue my work inspired by these women pioneers.
Helén Svensson’s solo exhibition “Footnotes”, curated by Ashik Zaman, opens at ID:I in Stockholm on Friday, March 6 and runs through March 22. An artist and curator talk is scheduled with Ann-Sofi Noring on March 18.
Team Credits:
Words by Ashik Zaman
Photography by Jean Baptiste Beranger
Art Credits:
1, 6, 7, 8 & 9) Helén Svensson, “Judy”, “Louise” & “Carmen”, Kvinnorna, exhibition, Galleri Duerr, 2025.
2, 4 & 5) Helén Svensson, “Lenore” & “Lygia”, Darlings, exhibition, Helix Art Space (HAS), 2025.
3) Helén Svensson, “Ruth”, Darlings, exhibition, Helix Art Space (HAS), 2025.