The Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation Grant Recipients 2019
4 dec 2019 → 26 jan 2020
The Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation annually awards a grant to young Swedish artists to support them in their work. Olof Marsja and Iris Smeds are the recipients of the 2019 edition of the grant. The Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation was established in 1985 by Jeanette Bonnier (1934–2016) in memory of her daughter Maria, who died in a car accident in 1985 at only 20 years old. Maria was studying architecture at Columbia University in New York and moved in a circle of young artists. Since its inception, the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation has sought out the new and the innovative, and the artists who have received the grant over the years are today among Sweden’s most celebrated.
The 2019 guest jury consists of Katarina Pierre, Director of Bildmuseet, and Loulou Cherinet, Professor at Konstfack.
OLOF MARSJA, BORN 1986. LIVES AND WORKS IN GOTHENBURG.
From the jury’s statement:
“With humour and great seriousness, Olof Marsja brings together different materials and forms in ambivalent and friction-filled constellations. Like a trickster, he eludes categories such as visual art, craft, tradition, and the contemporary. In his installations—where reindeer antlers meet glass from the studio—he creates his own sculptural vocabulary, generating new dialogues and narratives. With roots in Sámi experiences, Olof Marsja lifts other perspectives to the fore and expands the Swedish art scene. Playfully and intelligently, he explores and articulates questions of identity, contemporaneity, and history.”
IRIS SMEDS, BORN 1984. LIVES AND WORKS IN STOCKHOLM
From the jury’s statement:
“The significance of Iris Smeds does not lie in her credibility as a unique, young, and promising artistic talent—quite the opposite. Over the past decade she has moved at the threshold of culture between performance, writing, theatre, film, and scenography, giving form to the half-burnt-out, the mediocre, and the comfortably unsuccessful. In her surreal visual worlds, a radical questioning emerges of how we construct the world around us and of the deeply absurd nature of human existence. Through an artistic practice that follows its own logic, Iris Smeds convinces us of the resilience of art.”
Utställning