Salad Hilowle, Morianer, 2018
02:32 min
Photo: Gergely Palos
With support from: Film i Öst, SVT, Norrköpings Filmfond, Svenska Filminstitutet, Film i Region Gävleborg, Folkets Bio
Thanks to: Henrik Pekkari, Värmekyrkan, the inhabitants of Norrköping and the film team in Norrköping
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
About the artist
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.