Yuvinka Medina: Your works highlight what is often marginalised or perceived as indefinable. Instead of clarity, you emphasise the value of the uncertain and open. What does this in-between space mean to you, and how do you think it can create new ways of understanding and imagining the future?
Åsa Cederqvist: Yes, that’s right. I often think about how our world is governed by what we consider dirty and clean—both literally and mentally. It’s very binary and rational. At the same time, one’s inner reality isn’t always so certain about one or the other. Usually, it’s both. I often try to create a layered storytelling that reveals how we don’t really see the world in such either-or terms. The undefinable, in its genuine form, is something very hopeful and full of freedom to me. It stands as a counterpoint to the rational, fixed, and definitive. It also mirrors the experience of a creative process and a becoming. In a creative process, you need to allow yourself to take in everything – not just the beautiful and approachable. And only then, when you’re open to that, you can also deal with it and create something authentic and powerful, that hopefully can be liberating.
Biography
Åsa Cederqvist (b. 1975, Stockholm) based in Sweden. She holds a Master’s degree from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm (2000). Cederqvist has had solo exhibitions at Gustavsbergs Konsthall, Sweden (2021); Galleri Lars Palm, Sandviken (2021); KRAFT, Bergen (2020) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017). Group exhibitions includes Hanaholmen, Helsinki (2022); Färgfabriken, Stockholm (2021); Kunsthal Rønnebæksholm, Denmark (2020); Galerie im Marstall, Ahrensburg (2019); and Momentum 10, Moss (2019). She has created public art commissions for the City of Gothenburg (2024), Heby Folkets Park (2022) and Stockholm Konst (2020).
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Image: Åsa Cederqvist, The Cabinet, 2010. Still. Photo: Frida Wendel
