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.

Theresa Traore Dahlberg

It appears that you have assumed dual artistic identities as filmmaker and artist. Since the recent release of Ouaga Girls, which opened to great critical acclaim, you have been gaining renown as a filmmaker. Following your prior background in film, what was your experience of studying art at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm?
“Coming from a background in film, I used the time mainly to work with other materials. Although the process is different, it is my own thoughts, ideas, fears and wonders in the end. I was quite stressed in my final year, as it felt like time was running out while I still had so many ideas. Since I had worked a lot before going there, I knew that all the space, opportunities and brain capacity were a privilege that came with a due date.”

Tell us about the large-scale sculptural installation Copper and Cotton that you presented at the spring degree exhibition last year.
“It’s a 12-metre sculpture made out of leftover circuit cards in copper and wool spun by excluded women accused of witchery. My thoughts circled around the collective, such as collective exclusion, the power that can come out of people organising themselves and collective reflection. To me, the materials are seductive and their history touches upon subjects that integrate the past, present, local and global.”

The common denominator between your film works to date is that the narratives derive from places in Africa, while bringing the realities of female protagonists to the fore in light of the patriarchal expectations of women. Taxi Sister follows one of the very few female taxi drivers in Dakar, Senegal, and Ouaga Girls a group of female car-mechanic students in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Do stories come to you organically or do you set out to find poignant ones to tell?
“They come organically and usually reflect where I am at that point in my life. I never know what my next work will be, since I cannot predict the future. I just finished Ouaga Girls and The Ambassador’s Wife, and everyone is already asking me what my next film will be. I am aware that this would be a good time to dive into new ideas, but I don’t rush into things. When I know, I know, and I won’t have much of a choice but to
do it full-heartedly.”

You’ve described your personal experience filming The Ambassador’s Wife as “complex” based on the power structures and notions of post-colonialism omnipresent in the narrative. Looking back at it now, what are a few things that comes to mind that stayed with you after the project was completed.
It was interesting to hear and see in discussions after the film was completed how people had experienced completely different films. What you see, says a lot about what you don’t see.

What is in store for you in 2018?
“Ouaga Girls will be released in cinemas all over France this spring and will keep travelling the world for festival screenings. I just found out that I will exhibit new works – sculptures – at OFF Biennale Cairo, which I am greatly looking forward to!”

Liva Isakson Lundin

How would you reflect on your time since graduating from the Royal Institute of Art?
“After I graduated in spring 2016, I took some necessary time to think, sketch and find new materials and points of departures. I recently showed a group of sculptures with glass and silicone for the two-person exhibition Elaster. I am continuing to explore these two materials that have introduced me to new directions in my work. Glass has a stiff surface in contrast to the bendable steel that I am used to, resulting in a much more angular, almost graphical expression. Silicone allows me to work with transparency and depth with the help of colour. “Everything in production is much more complicated now, since I generally work with big sculptures and installations that are demanding in terms of space and materials. I am still figuring out how to work without the opportunities afforded to you at art school in terms of equipment and big studio rooms. However, I’ve got better at organising projects.”

There is an evident sense of physicality in most of your body of work to date. On that note, how would you describe your studio practice?
“I elaborate my ideas by working in parallel with sketches, experiments, models and writing. I follow all the clues I can find, letting the sculptures crystalise from the practical process. I try to keep an open mind all the time, since things that by coincidence happen on the side of the focus often lead to new projects. It is like a chain of reactions. “The components of my installations take turns shaping, stabilising and deforming each other, creating tense encounters that often relate to bodily experiences like weight, strength or balance. Working initially with steel, I realised how it has its own strength and will. I found a resistance to my sense of control over the sculpting process that intrigued me. I still work with it, both by itself and in combination with, for example, latex. Latex is an organic, very fragile-looking material that is super-elastic and strong. It is very different from steel, but both of these materials have a potential inherent movement that can be used to create tension.”

As a sculptor, what are your ideas on spatiality in the way you approach a room?
“I usually see my sculptures as something going on in, and interacting with, a room, rather than something merely on display. The exhibition can, for example, be a measurement of power between the room and the material, where I am letting the relationship between the two vary. It’s a situation that can shift between intimacy, control, reliability and daring. I want the insecurity from my experiment-based process to stay intact during an exhibition.
“When installing an artwork I also think a lot about how you can move in the room and what happens to the work when you do that. That movement can create new shapes, angles or reflections of importance. For me, the work is never finished until it has been installed somewhere. Sometimes the permanent parts of the room help maintain the shapes of the sculptures.”

What lies ahead for you in 2018?
“I am in full production mode for rgw Market Art Fair at Liljevalchs in Stockholm, where I will show with Wetterling Gallery. I am also working on a solo exhibition at Ahlbergshallen in Östersund that will open during spring.
“Later in the year, I will take part in an exhibition at Aguélimuseet in Sala, and I will start the fall with a solo exhibition at Wetterling Gallery. After that, I will go on a scholarship journey with the Royal Academy of Arts to Rome to get some new inspiration.”

Susanna Jablonski

Your presentation at the spring degree exhibition of the Royal Institute of Art last year was so delectable. In what was a giant space – Tomteboda, Stockholm’s former mail terminal – it appeared to confine a sculptural world of its own, coming across as a dense exhibition in a considerably small amount of space. How did you approach it?
“I like to let the space decide how, and sometimes what, I will show – to let the room make an impression on the work, as well as the work on the room. At Tomteboda, I wanted to use one of the tall, unfinished concrete walls by a restroom. I built a floor – a stage, you could say – mirroring the wall like a fold-down bed, in order to create a defined space for my sculptures. Some of them got to rest on the light fixtures, others climbed up the walls.”

As a sculptor, what is your studio process like?
“I have many processes going on simultaneously. A day could consist of casting in glass, testing asphalt samples, arranging found objects, editing sound or video, reading or making small clay sculptures. “These days I think a lot about entropy, geology, ghosts and super-slow movements. Also threshold moments and other in-betweens, different ways of mourning and making sense of the world. Most of my work comes to me in that moment when I’m about to wake up from a nap, when the furniture and sounds of the room blend with my dreams.”

Tell us more about the materials you work with.
“I work with substances that are at the limit of what they are capable of sustaining. I don’t think so much about how to use them in sculpture-making necessarily, but more about how they relate to my body, their surroundings, temperature and entropy, their origin and their role in written history and contemporary life.“When a form or substance stays in my mind for a long time, it usually makes its way into my studio and starts to exist, transform and blend with the other materials and narratives going on in there at the time. I usually work with materials that have some sort of pre-established value or function, or that are part of a larger system – often paper towels, glass or stone. And when I work with them I want the materials to shift slightly and start working together and create new ways of being experienced.”

With Slow Wave, your project with William Rickman, the breadth of your practice also extends to music. The sound is always so ethereal and evocative. Do you distinguish your sculptural and musical practices as vastly different ventures?
“I don’t distinguish anything that is or has been part of me as being very different from other parts, really. I tend to include everything in everything, you could say. Music is great for narratives and lately I’ve been making sound or music for my sculptures.”

Slow Wave has had a long-term collaboration with visual artist Santiago Mostyn, as seen in Mostyn’s video work Delay, presented at Moderna Museet in 2016. What is this collaborative process like?
“Santiago and I are usually very engaged in each other’s projects, and the collaboration with Slow Wave is an ongoing exchange of thoughts. With Delay, the song came first, but what inspired part of it was actually conversations on Skype with Santiago.

Lastly, what’s next for you in 2018?
“I’m working on an artistic research project called The Gender of Sound with one of my favourite artists, Cara Tolmie. The title comes from Anne Carson’s pivotal text of the same name and will culminate in a multifaceted music, art and performance event that presents some of our findings. I’m also preparing for two exhibitions that will take place later in the spring – one solo exhibition at Marabouparken, and another one at Erik Nordenhake Gallery, where Slow Wave has been invited by C-print as curators to exhibit in a gallery context for the first time.”

Lap-See Lam

​Your artistry appears notably informed by notions of diaspora and your cultural background. In particular, Chinese culinary establishments are brought to the forefront in a thought-provoking and beautiful way. What brings you to these restaurants in your art?
“My parents and grandmother owned a Chinese restaurant for 30 years, and besides them, one can track down our relatives through restaurants all over Sweden. My ambition has never been to write about the Cantonese migration in Sweden, but rather to use the notion of Chinese restaurants as an interface and a metaphor to approach certain questions.
“The Chinese restaurant is a trace of a wider global Chinese diaspora – a trace that is both something familiar in our cities, but at the same time holds the identity of ‘the oriental other’. The difference between the local guest and the ‘serving-other’ is a dichotomy that has been central to the creation of this type of business. As a second-generation Canto-Swede, I find myself navigating these cultural in-betweens, with access to both the internal and external gaze.”

With your art it’s as though we’re seeing something novel, perhaps due to the use of HD scanning and HD animation in storytelling, to its fullest potential beyond just aesthetical and technical value.
“I try to use the medium that has the potential to immediately reflect the core of the content. With Oriental Travesty I chose laser 3-D scanning, since I knew that this type of rendering, in contrast to a place that in general is considered outdated, would force the viewer to see it in a new light. The 3-D scanner collects huge amounts of point data in the distance between the scanner and object, and these create a three-dimensional surface. Applying a photo on the surface creates the illusion of a three-dimensional environment, a 3-D model. Therefore, the technique itself is based on the mathematics of distance, and reflects the sense of movement and displacement, which I wanted to access early in the process.”

​Mother’s Tongue, your recent collaborative art project with filmmaker Wingyee Wu, presents an app-based experience of visual storytelling. Apps as a platform for art still appear quite ahead of time. Tell us more about the project.
“Our choice to frame the work in an app follows the tradition of tourist-guide apps, where one is guided to discover famous or alternative stories of a city. We used this framework, but turned the gaze around – instead, the viewer is a tourist at the sites, guided by a perspective that has emerged into the shape of a subjective consciousness belonging to the Chinese restaurant, a ghost from the future. What happens if a place of projection suddenly looks back at us?
“We wanted to play with the linear time perspective. The first narrative takes place in the past on a site that once was a Chinese restaurant. The second story is one about a former owner that takes place in 2018, in a hybrid Chinese restaurant. The final story, of a grandmother at an old Chinese restaurant that looks like the first ones traditionally did, takes place in 2058. The voice-over narrative follows the logic from past to present, but is interrupted by the dramaturgy of the actual sites. In addition, the work is performed in real time, with your physical experience at the actual sites guided by the spectator from the future.”

​What’s in store for you in 2018?
“In March, Olle Norås and I will exhibit at Bonniers Konsthall as the recent recipients of the Maria Bonnier Dahlin award. Also, Wingyee Wu and I are developing Mother’s Tongue into a short film.”

Team credits
Words by Ashik Zaman
Photography by Ivan Nunez
Styling by Hilda Sandström
Hair and make up by Janina Granroth
Stylists assistant Katie-Ruby McLaughlin Robinson

Fashion credits
#1 Waistcoat by Acne Studios, shirt by Totême, trousers by Levi’s, shoes by Eytys
#5 Shirt by Acne Studios, jacket by BACK, jeans by Filippa K, Shoes by Ganni  and belt from Humana Second Hand
#9 Jacket by L’Homme Rouge, sweater by Acne Studios, shirt by Whyred, trousers
and shoes by Eytys
#13 Blazer by Rave Review, shirt by Hope, trousers by The Cords & Co, shoes by & Other Stories

Art credits
#2 White material (2017) by Theresa Traore Dahlberg
#3 The Ambassador’s Wife (16 minutes) by Theresa Traore Dahlberg
#4 Ouagadougou, copper and cotton (2017) by Theresa Traore Dahlberg
#6 Inwards (2016), steel and latex; photograph by Jean-Baptiste Béranger. Courtesy of Wetterling Gallery by Liva Isakson Lundin
#7 Stimuli (2016), spring steel and gelatin; photograph by Jean-Baptiste Béranger         Courtesy of Wetterling Gallery by Liva Isakson Lundin
#8 Peel, Shear, Tensile (2017), Silicone, glass and mdf; photograph by Liva Isakson Lundin by Liva Isakson Lundin
#10 Untitled (2017), Asphalt and cherry wood; Photograph by Santiago Mostyn by Susanna Jablonski
#11 Untitled (2017),Ceramic, polyester, ribbon, keys, marble, lavender, plastic bag, dried flowers, lampshade, stone, rubber, acorn, bean pod, jade and brass nails; Photograph by Santiago Mostyn by Susanna Jablonski
#12 Rebecka (2017),Glass and cobblestone; Photograph by Jean-Baptiste Béranger. All images courtesy of Most Ghosts Hold Grudges, Galleri Mejan, Stockholm 2017 by Susanna Jablonski
#14 Mother’s Tongue; photographs by Anna Drvnik by Lap-See Lam
#15 Mother’s Tongue; photographs by Anna Drvnik by Lap-See Lam
#16 Oriental Travesty; photograph by Jean-Baptiste Béranger by Lap-See Lam

Let’s begin with Page, your music project with Eddie Bengtsson that dates back to the early ’80s. Later, synth-pop would grow into one of two identity-signifying subcultures of the decade alongside hard rock. You’re known to have been quite the pioneers in this genre in Sweden.

“I was 15 when we formed the band, and synth-pop had not even begun to have its moment. I had been listening to Gary Newman and Sparks and you could say both Eddie Bengtsson and I came from a musical background in the new wave. When we first started doing gigs, we were often on the line-up with prog, punk and post-punk bands. Later came Depeche Mode and there was a big breakthrough. Around that time, however, you would run to get a record at the faintest sound of a keyboard, getting your hands on whatever could be had that wasn’t rock. This identity factor you mention indeed became widespread and synth was the furthest down in the hierarchy after hard rock. Identification with music and the subcultural scene has always been a big part of me.”

You just released a new a record with Page this spring and have scheduled a couple of shows. What is Page’s sound like in 2017?

“We were always very clear with labelling what we
do as pop music. We orchestrated our music in a quintessential pop-music setup, using bass, guitars and drums, although we played them on synthesisers and drum machines. We try to be consistent with our sound – there’s no drive to reinvent ourselves or try
to sound in line with current times. We’re well aware that we’re in our fifties, but what lies at the core is the love for a certain type of music. In a sense, we are very nerdy when it comes to sound and recording. When it comes down to music, time always remains a factor. It’s rewarding but also very time-consuming.”

You’ve been in two musical projects with Alexander Bard, starting with Vacuum in the mid-’90s and, later, BWO (Bodies Without Organs). People used to talk about Swedish music being “big in Japan”, but with Vacuum you hit it really big out in Eastern Europe instead.

“I think that happened very organically for us, with Alexander having had a lot of recognition already out there with Army of Lovers in the ’90s. But what’s good to note is that Vacuum was founded on a clear idea and concept to make pretentious symphonic synth music. A lot of the ideas were eccentric. It was never intended to be lagom – balanced – and I think that bombast and strongly melodic quality worked very well in that market.”

Around this time you were already known as a gallerist, working alongside Ciléne Andréhn on your eponymous gallery. Being on the highbrow gallery circuit and competing in something so public as Melodifestivalen with BWO surely places you in two disparate worlds. What was it like?

“It was hard and I remember being quite divided and receiving some criticism about my choices. Times were different then, much less accepting than today. There was a reluctance on some people’s parts to accept my being both a gallerist and pop musician. I’ve always had the great support of my colleague Ciléne, who always had an easy-going approach to  it. Had it not been for that, things might have been different. I was very stressed, though, and anxious about how it might impact on the perception of the gallery, but in the end, I learnt that, overall, people aren’t so bothered about what you do – it’s largely in your mind.”

Apropos of art, it feels like the idea that contemporary art will have its big moment among the public in the wake of social media has been in contention for quite a few years. I often get the impression that what slows the revelation down is this misconception that art is per se intellectually demanding, which then is alienating.

“It’s a big misconception, this idea that you need to address what you are seeing in words, as opposed to the experience of art being allowed to be something intuitive. I think intuitive and wordless perception is unfairly written off. It’s difficult for many to grasp because we’re raised to analyse and question the things around us – ‘What is the meaning?’ Perhaps it doesn’t mean anything and is just a state of a mind or sentiment evoked by the view.”

I think showmanship in art is something I’d love  to see more of and which would make art more interesting sometimes. What would you like to particularly push for in art?

“That’s a difficult question and, in many ways, I feel like I’m already pushing for art at large merely by being a gallerist, maintaining a space that welcomes the public to come and see art. There are moments when you feel you are doing all in your power and wish that people would channel their curiosity more towards art and channel themselves when art appears distant. All these clichés about art being subject to snobbery or about feeling unwelcome at galleries just make you go, ‘No, that’s not really true.’ When you found a gallery [it’s because] you want to be creating the scene, and the public is a big factor in that. You don’t want to exclude anyone.”

I’m keenly taking note that you don’t come across as particularly nostalgic about the past as we’re having this conversation.

“No, I strongly dislike nostalgia. I think it comes down to a conscious decision not to go down that route, realising that if I do then I’m easily struck by a certain sadness. The epiphany is that it doesn’t really serve a point. What’s gone is gone and will not be coming back. I find it more rewarding to look forward and anticipate what is to come.”

On that note, you have a role in acclaimed director Ruben Östlund’s new film, The Square, which was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival this spring. Very exciting! Is this your first involvement with cinema?

“Yes! The movie uses the art world as a point of departure and presents a heightened image of what it is like – the director’s vision of it, basically. It is fiction, which needs to be said, but there are elements of certain aspects of the art world that resonate. Ruben enjoys working with a mixture of trained actors and amateurs to maintain an authentic feel and that’s how I ended up being approached for a role.
I play Elna, the chairwoman of the board at the museum where the lead character, played by Claes Bang, is the chief curator. Suffice to say, my character isn’t that impressed by him and I am the catalyst for  a chain of events in the movie. At its core, the film  is about the personal moral dilemmas of the main character, which are similar to what everyone faces  in contemporary, quotidian society. It was a great experience and Ruben was lovely to work with.”

Lastly, what is a movement or shift you are seeing happening right now?

“I would say what is going on is a turn away from the anonymous and mass-produced towards authentic and unique experiences that bear an intimate feel, which you see in art and consumption. Take the resurfacing of vinyl in music as a great example. As for art, there is sometimes a push for it to carry so many ideas on its shoulders, for it to be political and mirror the state of the world and offer effective change. An interesting thought, however, is that perhaps art over the long haul isn’t the best-suited domain for that. Perhaps the rationale for art is rather to offer something aesthetic and poetic as a contrast. Maybe that will become increasingly important. I don’t have an answer myself, but it’s food for thought.”

Credits:
Words by Ashik Zaman
Portrait by Elsa Soläng
Art photographs by Jean-Baptiste Béranger
All fashion by Marimekko
Andréhn-Schiptjenko Gallery

Art Credits:
#3 Betongverk Elsa Stenhammar vid pianot by Siri Derkert
#5 Bomb by Per B Sundberg
#6 Installation by José León Cerrillo
#7 Neoconcrete Space by Jacob Dahlgren
#8 Bedscene by Cajsa von Zeipel
#9 Josefs Sömn by Omid Delafrouz
#10 Flickor (Allra käraste Tova) by Lena Johansson 

In light of our times it seems the political will increasingly claim centre stage in contemporary art, with a shift away from post-internet art and an echo of societal changes and challenges occurring. With the recent outcome of the US presidential elections, it was interesting to see art taking to the streets in the form of protest signs and the like. How do you see your artist peers in NYC responding to what’s going on?

“Art in the service of social movements has been a pretty reliable companion throughout the past century. I would like to see artists translate their vigour not just into creation but action and organisation. Whether we like it or not, the discourse has changed tremendously almost overnight. It’s almost as if we don’t speak the old language any more. How do you stay adept at processing this new configuration when you’ve momentarily lost the battle over language? I guess you gotta approach this in ways you don’t find immediately conducive to your creative process.”

Your work is very intriguing – intricate and visually titillating at once, even independent from a given context. But reading into your artistic statement, there’s really an extended breath to your work and you can see all the elements start to unfold. Notably, you address the influence of the geopolitics of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and reflect on land grabs and borders.

“Yeah. I moved to Berlin when I was 21 and it was there, at a relative distance, where I got a better understanding of where I’m from. I also met my future husband there who’s a native New Yorker – he’s half-Palestinian and grew up on the Jew-y Upper West Side in Manhattan. So over the years, self-definition and political responsibilities changed for me and I came to terms with – but also started challenging – certain aspects of the narrative I grew up with. That meant that I had to reconcile my undeniable love for my homeland in spite of all its problematic aspects. And I’m not just paying lip service saying that – there are actual consequences to partisanship in this conflict. Opting out of studying the history of the two peoples because it’s inconvenient or doesn’t sit right with your beliefs makes you complicit to varying degrees in this situation. Disengaging is just not possible.

“After I got my MFA in Berlin we moved to New York, where once again my Jewish and Israeli identities had to reconfigure themselves. Shortly after that, I started volunteering at Jewish Voice for Peace, a grass-roots organisation that calls for peace and social justice in the region, and I’ve also been teaching kids at an after-school programme at a Reform Jewish congregation in downtown Manhattan.”

The notions of collecting data and creating maps to chart the flux of power is omnipresent in your work. Tell us more about this process and how it’s carried out.

“A few years ago I started researching and navigating through databases of several independent Israeli monitoring agencies that operate in the occupied territories and track anything from borders in administrative shift to statistics reflected in maps. For example, you’d have these maps showing which parts of cities are off-limits to Palestinians, or you’d see bypass roads for Israeli use only that create these meandering choreographies that hug and bisect Palestinian villages, and so on.

“Most people know what their home countries look like on a map – they know the shape of the US or Manhattan, or the different continents. What does it feel like, though, growing up deprived of such a pillar of familiarity, when everything you know is constantly morphing? This is the reality for both Israelis and Palestinians. Coupled with my own childhood memories of growing up in Israel, I wanted to create this hybrid that’s part the story of people’s loss, and part my own history. I use black and white gesso that contains sand that I bring from the West Bank and Ra’anana, my hometown in Israel, and I paint in fragments and use silkscreens to have the paint sort of struggle to make it onto the surface. I guess these landscape abstracts are a reinterpretation of maps and the visuals that made an impression during my early years, whether they be accurate or romanticised memories.”

You paint more or less exclusively with gesso, right?

“Yeah, I love gesso – it can take a figurative beating. It’s a primer so it’s made to withstand lots of layering and is great for having stuff mixed into it, such as the sand I bring back, and still come out kind of graceful. I use both black and white gesso and mix them, trapping gradations that I then unfold and spread from the core outwards.”

What’s the story behind the series of monotypes called Excerpts from hate mail and conspiracy theories sent to the East End Temple in Gramercy, Manhattan?

“Religious institutions have always been a venue for people’s airing of messianic grievances and hallucinations, no matter their faith. The institution where I teach the after-school programme occasionally receives visually fascinating mail with anything ranging from ‘truths we all have to open our eyes to’, to illuminati-themed theories, to straight-up pulverised substances. Whenever a new one comes in, the school gives me access to it and I scan it and make large-scale monotype abstracts and small-scale zines out of the original materials.”

You were recently showing at Samuel in Chicago in a group show where each artist was invited to submit a flag based on the Earth Day flag, which makes for a symbol of environmental protection. What did you present?

“I showed one of my micro-suede pieces, an abstract made with my gesso mixture containing sand from Palestine/Israel. In many ways this regional dispute is emblematic of what typifies almost every conflict in the world – a land grab, born out of different circumstances, which then seeks justification for itself, be it religious, nationalist or survivalist. In almost all cases, the occupation radically redefines the occupier over time. Land grabs tell a story that covers a people’s past, present and future, and contains all the elements of the human psyche – from our capacity to hurt each other to the ultimate devotion to our origins and this earth.

Lastly, what’s coming up for you in 2017?

“I’m a member of the artist council at Jewish Voice for Peace so we’re in the process of figuring out what the cultural legacy of this grass-roots organisation could be. There are a couple of publications in the works. Other than that I’m in a couple of upcoming group shows in Europe and America, and a residency later this year. Stay tuned.”

Credits: 

Interview by Ashik Zaman

guberstein.com

I’ve said this to you before, but part of what I like about your work is how bold you are about your world views. You’ve never shied away from being political and setting things straight in a heavy- hitting fashion.

“The political exists, of course, and I suppose you tend see much more in illustrated comic art, but we seem to be living in very anxious times, where we are afraid to do things that can be contested and could be deemed not to be the ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’ thing to do. There’s a reluctance to do anything, in case you become excluded. But then again, the media climate is so cutthroat today – there is so much to lose in the public eye. People are hating, left and right, in whatever channel and forum.”

“When you think of political art, it’s so easy to address things that get you a pat on the back from everyone. Take solidarity, anti-racism or even capitalism. What you rarely see is artists making themselves the focus and looking critically at the social group to which they belong – the middle class scrutinising the middle class, for example. you say I’m bold, but sometimes I wish I were bolder. It’s easy to cop out when things are so polarised, with no room to move along the grey scale.”

One of the most ingenious artworks I saw of last year was your poster YOLO, which you made to highlight the situation of the refugee boats crossing the ocean towards Europe.

“When I did it, I felt that, as a whole, our society finds it so difficult to emotionally relate to those who are running away from horror. That scared me and still does. It’s so hard for us to think beyond numbers and start thinking of people as moms, dads and hipsters and the like. These people have no choice. And I thought, ‘How better to express this in a way that gets through to my own peers than by using language that is symbolic for my generation?’ The term YOLO in the Western world refers to guilty pleasure and just giving in to the moment – such as getting drunk out of your mind or spending money. Here, YOLO signifies a real, tangible riskthat has lethal consequences, showing how worlds apart we are.”

Does your art derive from thorough concept or does it organically grow on the canvas?

“What happens is that making art, in a way, becomes my own personal therapy. It’s a way to channel my fears, feelings and reactions to things that I see going on around me in the world. It’s my way to communicate. When there’s a troubling feeling, I keep elaborating on it in my painting – exhausting it, until it’s been fully dealt with, you could say. Take, for example, when police rode over demonstrators at a rally in Limhamn in the south of Sweden [in 2014]. When I see something like that, I have to do something immediately.”

You also have a background as a punk musician. how do your two roles as a politically orientated musician and painter differ, if at all?

“Well, the audience differs and the expectations are so different. Punk music is all about giving a ‘f*** you’ to the establishment, and as a painter, you are ultimately a part of the establishment you are bashing. The punk in me wants to dare even more and kick out, while the painter in me will go, ‘Hush, hush.’ It’s like two different personalities at once.”

Something that is striking, looking at your body of work, is the existence of children, which bears a certain symbolic value in light of the matters you call to mind. I like that, and I find children to be rare in contemporary art.

“I did a project called Good Luck when I was pregnant with my son – I intended to call it One Day, All of This Will Be yours. It speaks of how I was feeling. you become a parent and you increasingly think of what world you’re bringing your child into and what you are leaving behind. And then there’s that insufferable feeling that humanity is in crisis and it will continue to be. We will just continue to ruin things for future generations and there’s not really going to be a change.”

Tell us about your current solo exhibition, No Matter Who Wins, It Will Be Us Losing, at krognoshuset, in Lund.

“It’s a very dark exhibition, not just emotionally, but also visually. Everything runs in black. I’ve long felt a disappointment about the political climate in Sweden. My family has politically always been left. When the social democrats in Sweden signed their agreement to the closure of our borders, it really felt like such a blow to the face. One angle of the show, aside from painting, is revisiting historical socialist banners – originally red, but in my rendition, they are black as a symbol for sorrow. As such, these banners are hung on the exterior of the venue and there’s even a brass band playing mellowed renditions of tunes that are meant to tell of hope. But they don’t carry that hope here. The tunes instead belt out their sadness – as to their own death, you could say.”

No Matter Who Wins, It Will Be Us Losing, until March 13; Krognoshuset, Lund

Credit

Words by Ashik Zaman

Artwork

1 Den Fula Ankunge (2012)

2 YOLO (2015)

3 I Fjärran Ekar Stöveltramp … (2014)

3 UNTITLED ( Jag Vill Inte Kvävas Av Luften Jag Andas) (2013)

4 Havet ligger blankt (2015)

5 En Dag Ska Allt Det Här Bli Ditt (2013)

6 Vem Som än Vinner är Det Vi Som Förlorar (2015)

7 Landskap (2015)

Rebecka Bebben Andersson

In today’s contemporary art, we are always speaking of interdisciplinary artists, and in your case this couldn’t be more accurate. You’ve studied architecture, scenography and then fine art.

“I’ve always been very interested in new subjects and techniques, which essentially I think is because I’m rather restless. I constantly corner myself into situations beyond my command to see how it will play out. When I’m interested in something, I really devour it, which naturally impacts on what I do and comes through in my art.”

I first learnt of your work with NOLLI STHLM, a project where you examine your perceived freedom of movement and restrictions, and how this changes over the course of 24 hours, which is presented in 24 city maps of Stockholm. One for each hour. What prompted this work?

“I was first exposed to Nolli maps while studying architecture. They are a form of maps that describe the public and private spheres as black and white. I started reflecting about how I carry myself in the city and sensed that perhaps, rather than real obstacles, it might primarily be intrinsic feelings and perceptions that keep me out of certain spaces in the city.

“I thought of how a Nolli map could be made true of my own experience and about how I perceive Stockholm. Why am I choosing this street to go home? Would I still choose it two hours later in the day? And why am I heading home at this particular hour? The more I thought of it, the more restricted I felt.”

One of your recurring performances, Dygnsteckning, also uses the city as a clear point of departure. You basically draw nonstop over 24 hours from behind a window in a public place that looks out into the city. What have been your discoveries?

“The most obvious thing is that I end up doing drawings I would never do otherwise. I just let go of self-censoring and a sense of control. The most important thing is that I want to experience the city. In a way, it’s an act to defy myself and the conclusions I arrived at with NOLLI STHLM. Exposing myself to my own fears by sitting somewhere alone at night, which I normally wouldn’t dare to do. To know what room a woman can actually command if she wants.

“The drawings then beome a side effect of the performance itself. I’m scared as I sit there drawing. I feel like prey. Men yell at me, which just affirms what I already thought, even if it caught me by surprise when four guys were trying to get inside via the ceiling of a pavilion where I was drawing. It’s apparently incredibly provoking that women do things that have not been sanctioned by men.”

Your graduate project at Mejan is composed of a large-scale installation of a set decor depicting woods, a play on light and shadow, which allude to the fear and menace you might feel in the city at dark, perhaps often as a woman. I was bowled over by this work.

“I focused on the feeling that the public domain doesn’t really exist. That perhaps it’s partly just decor. Take a park as an example. If you’re scared to spend time there, then the park doesn’t quite exist as a choice of somewhere to go. It’s merely there as a backdrop. Something pretty to look at from the outside. If you were never to find yourself inside it at a given point in time, then in essence it doesn’t exist. Supported with a textual work about my experiences as a girl growing up in relation to men, the exhibition became much clearer – I’ve felt the freedom [Jag har känt på friheten]. And then the added subheading – But there was always someone else there.”

Jag har känt på friheten is currently on view at the subway station Odenplan in Stockholm until December 6

Jakob Ojanen

Your body of work sees works depicting exteriors and facades from the urban cityscape. I enjoy how it intersects painting and photography so seamlessly.

“Painting constitutes my body of work. Or perhaps rather the core of my practice is the search for painting for which I’ve worked with a diverse
material and technical approach, which perhaps doesn’t strike everybody as painting. For example, iPad drawings or the use of found objects. In paintings that incorporate photographic prints of urban surroundings and facades where graffiti had been removed, I saw a close but random kinship between the artistic, painterly practice in the studio and the work applied in society to remove and alter painted city surfaces. Those are two aspects I’ve tried to depict in my paintings. Maybe that’s why it’s worked so well with a hybrid technique.”

To me, I feel there’s something faintly melancholic about them, as though they say something about time and the perishability of all things.

“I myself don’t see them as melancholic but, rather, as an attempt to point at the time aspect in painting. For me, painting is timeless, in so far that everything happens at the same time. It makes for a documentation of events, brushstrokes of other doings that happened in the studio. There’s also time as a narrative itself and, moreover, the composition of an image is also conditioned by time. Lastly, there’s the time aspect of the viewer seeing the work.”

You’ve also worked on sculptural assemblage installations that strongly allude to the city with components such as grids and bricks.

“Yes, it’s grown on me a bit modestly, but essentially traces of it date back to my years as an art student, when I was trying to work more spatially and with an installation approach. With these new works I think there was a subconscious wish to put painting against something new in my practice. Essentially, a wish away from photographs.”

So if I were to ask you whether what you do is urban art, what would you say?
“I weigh against the urban. It is, after all, in the city that I live and work. Had I lived in the woods I would have been painting trees. The big narrative continues to be painting.”

Credits:

Interview by Ashik Zaman

Artwork by Rebecka Bebben Andersson & Jakob Ojanen