︎
︎


Släpljus
Carl Eldhs Studio Museum, Stockholm
12.05.2022 - 02.10.2022

Participating artists:
Chiara Bugatti (1991, IT)Susanna Jablonski (1985, SE) Cia Kanthi (1984, SE) Anna Ting Möller (1991, CN)
Cara Tolmie (1984, SC) Danae Valenza (1985, AUS)

With a site specific starting point in the work of the late Carl Eldh, the studio museum and it’s collections, Släpljus explores ways of relating to history and historiography, winding between the personal and larger historical narratives. From the wetness of a mollusk, to echoing empty exoskeletons or archeological fragments from times of war – nestled within the collections of the museum – six young artists pose questions on personal and collective memory, hybrid histories and identities, preservation and care, attempting to make sense of how to relate to what is our place in the winding path of time.

Other than a romantic shimmer, the exhibition title Släpljus (trailing, or dragging light) also refers to a low light setting used by historical conservators in examining ancient artifacts searching for previously unnoticed details in pursuit of unveiling new perspectives of bygone times.

Bringing new mediums, formats, histories and ideas into the museum, the exhibition wishes to probe, perhaps some of the most fundamental questions embedded within the human experience – What are our possibilities to savor more than shards of the present into the future? How do we relate to time, history and the inescapable act of disappearance, that in the end, we will all be a part of?




Listening Panels (Hard Measures)
2022
Cara Tolmie and Susanna Jablonski 

Listening Panels is a series of textile sculptures that both incorporate and exclude, with each panel hosting a circular void against a blue velvet base. Installed in the studio museum, the panels direct the gaze to certain sections of the permanent collection while obscuring what is around them, suggesting the blind eye of historiography.

The artwork is designed to be used as malleable architecture and acoustic support for the listening events that Susanna Jablonski and Cara Tolmie host as part their ongoing research project Gender of Sound. The work exists fluidly between Jablonski's sculptural practice and Tolmie's performative. Like listening bodies, they both absorb and redirect sound.

Untitled (Tyskmagasinen) 
2022
Susanna Jablonski

Amongst bodies and busts, a group of fragile, carefully-organised contemporary fossils are resting. Through these objects, the history and heritage of the two so-called Tyskmagasinen in the small mill town of Karlsvik, outside Luleå in Norrbotten, resounds. During the Second World War, Sweden made the store rooms available to the German army for storing provisions before transporting them to troops in Norway and Finland. Until a few years ago the buildings were unmarked, like silent witnesses to Swedish involvement in the war. In 2016, on the anniversary of the Midsummer Crisis – when Sweden acquiesced to the Nazi government's wishes – the buildings were burned to the ground. From the abandoned site, Susanna Jablonski has now collected the shards and charred remains. These small objects are the material manifestation of an ambivalent era in recent Swedish history that has suddenly become acutely relevant. Is there such a thing as neutrality in times of war, and if so, what are its terms? In Carl Eldh’s studio, the work is placed in vitrines that normally house tools and medals. In between the plaster casts and sculptures, the inconspicuous material forms a kind of anti-monument, nuancing the depiction of how history has traditionally been created and preserved.

This work was commissioned for The Luleå Biennial 2020.