haka

The idiom «Swedish family» makes people in Russia smile ambiguously. When Swedes get to know the connotation that the idiom has in the eastern neighbor’s language, they are very surprised and try to find explanation.

At first, the idea of the exhibition has appeared as a joke during the joint exhibitions of the artists of both countries. Only later it has become clear that the theme of the family, no matter Russian or Swedish, is characteristic of many artists’ oeuvres. The theme can unite as well as separate. The initiators and curators of the exhibition are the Uppsala haka group that unites five artists Helena Laukkanen, Natasha Dahnberg, Anna-Karin Brus, Katarina Sundkvist Zohari, Agneta Forslund.

We have tried to invite the authors who touch upon different aspects of the theme in their art, to take part in the exhibition. The most important thing is to explore what is the contemporary family. Is it a single mother, waiting for spousal support, or a homosexual couple with kids from previous marriages, or a refugee family, waiting for residence permit… or a young couple, who has given birth to two kids and bought a new house, or happy older husband and wife surrounded with children and relatives, or a childless couple, who has adopted twins?

Relationships in the family are the very part of the research that has the largest space. Many artists open their private lives to the audience, narrate the story of their families.
The research of the family is done using various methods.

The exhibition presents documentations of performances, installations, primers, pencil drawings, sculptures and embroidery artworks… We have selected the authors who use very different forms of the contemporary artistic language.

We have to speak about different things in different ways. Here there is a little bit of everything, like in any family.

Natasha Dahnberg

Katarina Sundkvist Zohari
Anna-Karin Brus
Helena Laukkanen
Agneta Forslund
Natasha Dahnberg
Nina Svensson
Per Enoksson
Roland Persson
Anders Krisár
Catti Brandelius
Johan Thurfjell
Knutte Wester
Taisia Korotkova
Nika Kukhtina
Marina Fomenko
Maria Pogorzhelskaia
Tatiana Antoshina
Vladimir Mishukov
Natalia Zintsova
Maria Krasnova-Shabaeva
Anastasia Kuznetsova-Ruf
Alexander Pogorgelsky
Swedish family

With support of:
Embassy of Sweden in Moscow
Uppsala mayor’s office