Exhibition 1/3 – 15/3 2025 Spånga Konstförening, Stockholm
Exhibition together with Eva Ljungdahl at Spånga Församlingshus, Värsta allé 1 Spånga (Stockholm)
Making music awards for the MANIFEST gala 13/3 2025 (Swedish indipendent musicproducers)
Actually
I am currently working on an exhibition with the working title “Actually”. It includes paintings and sculptures in metal and lacquer with the connecting link that they are made out of desire and poking at becoming.
Actually
indicates that something applies with greater truth according to current definitions and rules, although something else also applies according to temporarily changed rules or less formal regulations
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I could fill my works with secret codes and hidden symbols based on what really applies, but now I am not. I have a rational scientific view, but I believe in Art as a way to decipher existence. To contribute to a greater truth through playful associations, because Art speaks to our undercurrents and applies where current definitions and rules are fluid.
I was actually supposed to go to Israel/Palestine on November 8, 2023 as a Middle East scholarship holder for the BILDA study association. The idea was that I would meet both Palestinians and Israelis for a month in my capacity as an artist, document with a film camera and sketchbook in order to process my impressions during the spring and have an art exhibition in the fall of 2024
Then came the brutal attack on October 7, 2023 and the subsequent war.
As extremists on both sides controlled the development and the spiral of violence only grew, I realized that the idea I had thought about and planned for four years had become unfeasible. Even if the war were to end, the polarization is too great for anyone to want to talk to a well-meaning cultural worker from Sweden.
For several months I did nothing and was generally depressed. It was not until after New Year’s before I got started. First I cleaned the workshop, cleared out shelves and picked up old scraps that never really fit. Finished a Saxophone-peacock and a water-tap elephant and slowly the desire to create returned.
I thought: “Actually, there is no reason for me to stop making art. This is what I am good at, even if the world looks the way it does.
Actually, it’s not that difficult. To create on desire and intuition. To not have a specific theme and not plan too much, but just do.
At my age, you know roughly who you are and what you can do.
