{"id":27911,"date":"2023-09-13T14:43:01","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T13:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bonnierskonsthall.se\/?post_type=bonnier_exhibition&p=27911"},"modified":"2026-03-07T17:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T16:09:10","slug":"markus-ohrn-azdora","status":"publish","type":"bonnier_exhibition","link":"https:\/\/bonnierskonsthall.se\/en\/utstallning\/markus-ohrn-azdora\/","title":{"rendered":"Markus \u00d6hrn & Azdora \/ Requiem for Eva-Britt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Markus \u00d6hrn & Azdora \/ Requiem for Eva-Britt<\/h2>\n\n\n

1 may \u2192 16 jun 2024<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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A quick Google search of the word \u201cazdora\u201d will lead you to a stream of cheerful, warmly smiling women in aprons, with some flour in their hair, posing with a rolling pin in front of her freshly baked tortellini. This regional Italian word roughly means the woman of the house, but also, she who is in charge.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Bonniers Konsthall is proud to present Markus \u00d6hrn\u2019s first major exhibition at an art institution. Requiem for Eva-Britt<\/em> is a collaboration with the group Azdora, initiated in 2015 by \u00d6hrn and its members.<\/p>\n

At his grandmother\u2019s deathbed in the Torne Valley, Markus \u00d6hrn asked her if there was anything she regretted \u2013 was there anything she would have done differently if she could live her life again? He was expecting an answer along the lines of a wish to have educated herself or travelled more. Instead, Eva-Britt replied that if she had the opportunity to do it all over again, she wished she had dared to be more destructive. That she would have dared to follow her own inner desires and not spent her whole life just being there for others \u2013 as a good mother, grandmother or wife. The exhibition Requiem for Eva-Britt<\/em> is a sanctification of Eva-Britt\u2019s words, and the fruit of a nearly ten-year collaboration between the members in Azdora and Markus \u00d6hrn.<\/p>\n

The Azdora project emerged when \u00d6hrn was invited to create a site-specific work for the Santarcangelo Festival a few years after Eva-Britt’s passing. After spending time in the town, he began to notice the similarities between Santarcangelo and his own Torne Valley \u2013 it was the older women who seemed to make everything work, seemingly without getting anything in return. With grandmother Eva-Britt\u2019s wish in his heart, he put up posters at markets and pensioners\u2019 dances with an invitation to meet to celebrate l\u2019azdora. Close to sixty women of retirement age showed up. Based on the meeting, a core group of women was formed, who have since worked together, travelled the world and, in ritual forms, explored new aspects of their identities. They have smashed cars, washing machines and groceries, and released a vinyl that has become cult in black metal circles. In 2019, all thirteen azdoras travelled to Eva-Britt\u2019s birth village Niskanp\u00e4\u00e4, where they visited her grave and met her family.<\/p>\n

In the world of \u00d6hrn and the Azdoras, the tropes of religion are mixed with elements of black metal, tattoo culture, splatter and smoke machines. Through clothes and attitudes, they combine \u00d6hrn\u2019s artistic imagination with their own fantasies and desires. The subordinate becomes the powerful, where something dark, playful, luminous, brutal and heartfelt emerges.<\/p>\n

The heart of the exhibition is a large newly produced work in the form of a six-meter high timbered black bell tower in the main exhibition space. Several times per hour, the bell in the stack rings for the work\u2019s protagonist Eva-Britt. On Sundays, Markus \u00d6hrn and his invited guests give performances in the form of death masses at the top of the tower. On the final weekend, all the azdoras arrive to perform a tattoo ritual in a closing mass in which a selected visitor gets the name of their own azdora tattooed on their body.<\/p>\n

Markus \u00d6hrn\u2019s work is often about power shifts, or about creating power out of powerless roles. He often examines and returns to patriarchal structures or societal constraints, but also to a kind of wild and brutal liberation, especially for the female protagonists in his works. The exhibition is about redress, for Eva-Britt and other women \u2013 from the grave, across generations and in the present. It is also about opening doors and seeing what happens.<\/p>\n

Biography<\/h4>\n