We would not think think authenticity is our core concept, it is more like something we want to respect.since most of the time, we are working with the media and performance, both often involves narrative, we don’t want faking things to trick the audiences to believe a certain situation or “world”, like most of the movie and theater do. We want to treat the audiences with honest, we don’t want to trick them into anything.
Before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?
We try to make most of the decision based on whether we feel it is right or not(we might not always succeed but at least that is our goal), so it is harder to think too much about audiences when you try really hard to listen to yourself. And also because we want to treat audiences with honest, we don’t want force them into any particular emotions. But it is hard to do sometimes, because if there is narrative you want to transmit, it is hard to not wanting them to understand. We are also trying to figure out our own right way to do it.
your work evolving?
m born and brought up in an average size city in Sweden. My parents had quite ordinary professions and jobs, but they were not conformists. They were part of the 68-movement and lived an alternative lifestyle, in which I grew up. So even though there was no one in my family that was doing art, and could inspire me to become an artist, I think my upbringing and the way we lived when I was little, has had a great impact on me choosing art. To be an outsider, and to look critically on the world and society around you, there are things I learned at an early age, and characteristics essentially for making art, I think.
When it comes to experiences that have influenced my work, I think these have been more of inner kind of experiences and changes over time, than actual happenings or concrete events. I do see though, that my work changes and evolves, as I change. Things like becoming a parent or growing older has had impact on my work. New (to me) knowledge, both on an intellectual and on an emotional/psychological level also forms my work. I want my art to communicate both on an intellectual, emotional and perhaps on a spiritual level, so I try to develop these sides in me, as an ongoing process.
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
An artist that I come back to again and again is the Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere. She creates sculptures that reveal the human body and human life in all its frailty. I think her installations of equine and human bodies evoke feelings of love and consolation, but also of terror and violence. I find her work very unsettling, how she combines the beauty and horror of the body, in such a careful and conscientious way. Her sculptures of the body, whether human or equine, often stand on a plinth or inside a cabinet, as if posing for the viewer. This emphasises their monumentalised objecthood and the tension between what these objects represent and what they actually are. I see this theme of representation and objectification, close to questions concerning colonialism, racism and hierarchical structures.
believe that my identity and role as an artist is very much formed by the society in which I operate. But my standpoint is often in a critical position. I think being an artist, in many ways, is political. Not that the artist need to have a political message in her/his work, but that the way in which the artist operates is radically different from the emphasis of the capitalistic neoliberalistic society. I see that the need to work “slowly” over longer periods of time gets stronger as the society around me goes faster. I also appreciate when my work offers me resistance, and I find that in times when I have struggled with the work, and have experienced it as difficult, it has often evolved to a new level, or moved in an unexpected direction. I believe this means that struggles, difficulties, resistance and time is essentially for development, and therefore qualities we should embrace, and not just get rid of, as is often encouraged in a society where the aim is blissful, painless and smooth happiness.
Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that have influenced the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?
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