Program

18.00 Presentation Victoria Verseau 
18.15 Victoria Verseau, A Ghost’s Gaze, 2021
18.45 Salad Hilowle, Morianer, 2018
19.00 Presentation Theresa Traore Dahlberg 
19.15 Theresa Traore Dahlberg, The Ambassador’s Wife, 2017
19.40 Lap-See Lam/Wingyee Wu, Mother’s Tongue, 2017
20.00 Digital presentation Salad Hilowle 
20.15 Salad Hilowle, Morianer, 2018
20.30 Victoria Verseau, A Ghost’s Gaze, 2021
21.00 Digital presentation Lap-See Lam  
21.15 Lap-See Lam/Wingyee Wu, Mother’s Tongue, 2017
21.45 Salad Hilowle, Morianer, 2018
22.00 Theresa Traore Dahlberg, The Ambassador’s Wife, 2017
22.30 Victoria Verseau, A Ghost’s Gaze, 2021
23.00 Lap-See Lam/Wingyee Wu, Mother’s Tongue, 2017
23.30 Salad Hilowle, Morianer, 2018

Salad Hilowle, Morianer, 2018

02.32 min

In his work Morianer (Blackamoors), Salad Hilowle lets the camera pass slowly through a post-industrial building. It is a reconstituted place that has lost its value along with its previous use, but has also been liberated from the hard work and toil associated with industry. Here we encounter, and are reflected in, the eyes of others; the view of people and the gaze from a gathering of men. They seem to be waiting for something. Perhaps to be regarded in another way, besides the colour of their skin, to escape from the structural violence and discrimination that are consequences of colonial legacies and perpetual racialisation processes; to not just survive, but to live at length in peace and safety, as a life in Sweden should be.
– Erik Oscar Anderman, konstkonsulent Region Gävleborg

Salad Hilowle (born 1986, Somalia) grew up in Gävle, Sweden. As both an artist and film director, Hilowle frequently returns to how it feels to find oneself between two states of being; to be pressed by various notions regarding how we are expected to react based on our identities and to truly not be at home anywhere. We see this represented in fragile collages that balance on the boundary of the gently critical and the deeply frustrated, and in films that move as dreams among personal landscapes of memory and politically stifling spaces. Salad Hilowle has a MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. He is currently working on a feature film with the working title Tungomål (Tongue) and is a recipient of the Bernadotte Grant 2020 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Lap-See Lam/Wingyee Wu, Mother’s Tongue, 2017

17,42 min
3D-animation, HD video and stereo sound

The video installation Mother’s Tongue (2017), a collaboration with director WingYee Wu, is originally presented as an app, where 3-D film sequences transport the viewer on a journey across time and space. Told from the future, the film introduces three generations of women, who speak of their experience of the Chinese restaurant and how it changes over time. Identity politics and the value of cultural-historical heritage interweave, with the restaurant representing a subjective consciousness where traces of both realism and science fiction can be found.

Producer: Mossutställningar
Graphic design: Thomas Bush
Sound design: Max Stenerudh
Voice actors: Sofie Wu, Emmie Chau & Yuk-Lin Lam.
Special thanks to everyone at Restaurant Ming Garden, Restaurant Mandarin City, Restaurant Hong Kong and family Lam.
Courtesy of the artists and Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm.

Lap-See Lam (b. 1990, Stockholm) holds an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. She was awarded the prestigious Dagens Nyheter Culture Prize in 2021. In 2020, Forbes included her in their 30 under 30 list of young visionaries in European art and culture. In 2021, she was nominated for the international Future Generation Art Prize. She has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions, including the Luleå biennial (2018), Performa 19, New York (2019) and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (2019). She recently presented her first comprehensive solo exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall (2022) and was awarded the 2017 Mara Bonnier Dahlin Scholarship. Moderna Museet in Stockholm has works by Lam in its collection.

Wingyee Wu is an NYU and Central Saint Martins educated filmmaker, as well as a businesswoman with roots in the Hong Kong diaspora, currently living and working in Stockholm.

Theresa Traore Dahlberg, The Ambassador’s Wife, 2017

16 min

In the film The Ambassador’s Wife, we follow the wife of the French Ambassador and her comfortable existence in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The camera slowly pans over the residence’s impressive garden, where workers continually maintain its splendour. The viewer is soon aware that The ambassador’s wifedreamed of being a famous opera singer. Every day, she sings her repertoire knowing that as the ambassador’s wife she is not allowed to work. Caged in a privileged environment, she uses song to endure her present and keep her dreams alive.

Theresa Traore Dahlberg (f. 1983) is a filmmaker and visual artist. She grew up on the Swedish island of Öland and in Burkina Faso and is now based in Stockholm, with a degree from the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Royal Institute of Art as well as The New School, New York. Traore Dahlberg is acclaimed for her poetic and subtlety effective manner of portraying themes such as power structures, postcolonialism and equality.

Victoria Verseau, A Ghost’s Gaze, 2021

21:07 min
HD Video

A Ghost’s Gaze is Victoria Verseau’s attempt to capture and care for the memory of her late friend Meril. The artist and Meril met in Thailand when they were about to undergo a gender confirmation surgery. During a period marked by anxiety awaiting an uncertain future, they found important support in each other.

The work depicts abandoned places such as the now worn-down hospital where the artist and Meril underwent their surgery, the quiet hotel where they afterwards recovered and the tidal lands on the outskirts of the city. A whispering voice tells of the places and the friends, of distant memories that are evoked like ghosts. A Ghost’s Gaze wants to portray a place beyond time, a suspended spatiality that hovers between life and death.

Edit: Victoria Verseau
Photography: Daniel Takács
Sound design & grade: David Nord

Victoria Verseau (born 1988) works in a variety of media ranging from moving image to sculpture, large-scale installation and performance. She lives and works in Stockholm where she graduated with an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in 2020. Verseau’s artistic practice is focused on examination of the body, identity and social structures. In her work there are points of contact with philosophy and spirituality. Her personal experiences of being a trans and new woman is often a starting point. Based on her own story, she strives to process existential issues; who we are, who we want to be and the meaning of life. Victoria Verseau has had several exhibitions in Sweden: Kulturhuset, Stockholm, (2021), Gislaveds konsthall (2021) and Uppsala konstmuseum (2021). In 2017, she was awarded the ANNA Prize for her work with film.