For the first time in Sweden, Wael Shawky’s epic video trilogy Cabaret Crusades is presented, which includes The Horror Show Files (2010); The Path to Cairo (2012) and The Secrets of Karbala (2015). Using 200-year-old puppets and custom-made ceramic figures, a suggestive drama is created that recounts the history of The Crusades from an Arab perspective. The trilogy is inspired by the Lebanese historian Amin Maalouf’s Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1983). The exhibition takes place in a former shop in the centre of Skärholmen, at the invitation of the cultural association Folk.

Wael Shawky, Secrets of Karbala (still), 2015

Wael Shawky, Secrets of Karbala (still), 2015

Wael Shawky, The Horror Show File (still), 2010

Wael Shawky, The Horror Show File (still), 2010

Wael Shawky, The Path to Cairo (still), 2012

Thanks to Sfeir-Semler Gallery

A special thanks to Konsthall C for supporting the production

Address: Ateljé SKHLM in Skärholmens Galleria, Bredholmsgatan 4 (Next to Kjell & Company)

The exhibition was presented in conjunction with Emanuel Almborg’s defence of his PhD dissertation at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm with the artistic research project Toward a Pedagogy of the Utopian Image. The main part of the project are the three film works Acorn, The Nth Degree and Talking Hands, which are shown together for the first time at Mint.

Switchers, Acorn, 2021. Installation shot. Scenography by Ksenia Pedan.

Switchers, Acorn, 2021. Installation shot. Scenography by Ksenia Pedan.

Emanuel Almborg, Talking Hands, 2016

Emanuel Almborg, Talking Hands, 2016

Emanuel Almborg, The Nth Degree, 2018. Installation shot

Emanuel Almborg, Talking Hands, 2016

Emanuel Almborg, Talking Hands, 2016

Almborg is interested in communist pedagogy, revolutionary psychology, fiction and theatre, to speculate on lost futures and potentials; subjects and methods that are treated in differently in the three works. If we assume that there is a need for new “utopian” political and collective visions, then what role can art play in sketching them? With the help of psychologist Lev Vygotsky, philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, theatre director Konstantin Stanislavski, revolutionary psychiatrist Franz Fanon and science fiction writer Octavia Butler, these works explore artist film’s potential for education, resistance and equality.

Curator: Karin Bähler Lavér.

Photos: Johan Österholm

Mint presents A Careful Strike*; a group show that departs from the monumental painting The History of the Workers Movement by the sheet metal worker, musician and artist Ruben Nilson (1893–1971), permanently installed at ABF Stockholm. Painted during a ten year period around 1940. Following a tradition of workers’ art, the collective struggle for emancipation is at the centre of Nilson’s painting.

The exhibition follows Nilson’s artwork both in its ambition and challenge: What does the reproduction of a movement’s history entail? What different roles can art play in social movements and through which expressions? How is art engaged in today’s movements? A dialogue with the specific struggles and the histories that inform Nilson’s composition of intertwined visual narratives, structured through visible conjoined cuts form the curatorial framework of the exhibition. The work’s historical connections to contemporary situations are put in relation to what is missing within the frame – the histories and experiences that are left out while establishing a prevalent worker’s history.

A Careful Strike* is an exhibition and a public program (that preceded the exhibition during the fall of 2020), where workers’ art is confronted with Swedish and international contemporary works. The form and history of social movements are reflected through situated experiences of migration, care, exploitation and struggle. Through songs, poetry, talks, and artworks historical events and issues are made visible in a conversation on our current condition. What do we need to remember and what is to be done to win back the future?

*The exhibition borrows its title from the militant feminist collective Precarias a la deriva (Precarious women adrift) 2004. The collective was formed in Madrid in 2002 in reaction to the male-dominated unions that were organising a general strike in reaction to labour law reforms in Spain. Precarias a la deriva wanted to highlight the challenges many face in participating in strikes, due to a reality of precarious employment and a higher burden of reproductive work. They wanted to create a collective situated narrative on the general tendency toward the precarization of life they were experiencing and the ways to revolt and resist in our everyday lives. – Precarias a la deriva, Una huelga de mucho cuidado (Cuatro hipótesis), 2004. 

Curator: Michele Masucci

The exhibition is produced with generous support from The Worker Movement’s Culture Fund, The Swedish Arts Council and The City of Stockholm.

Bella Rune

Behzad Khosravi Noori

Harun Farocki

Dora García

Ingela Johansson

Salad Hilowle

Hito Steyerl & Problem Collective

Minus Miele

Henrik Andersson

Henrik Andersson

Patrick Kretchek

Hanni Kamaly

Ingela Johansson & Gudrun Olsson

Katarina Pirak Sikku

Diana Agunbiade-Kolawole

Iris Smeds

Diana Agunbiade-Kolawole & Iris Smeds

Behzad Khosravi Noori

In Scène d’Amour, Nadia Hebson presents a multidisciplinary work which continues her exploration of artistic recuperation through intuitive forms. Issuing from the desire to consider alternate Painting histories in the present, over the last decade Hebson has evolved a distinct and idiosyncratic mode of working that merges the role of artist, scholar and curator to realise constellations of objects, apparel, paintings, prints and text that think through the legacies of older peers, whilst making Hebson’s own subjective expression visible. 

In Scène d’Amour the work of Swedish painter, writer, radical anarcho-eco-feminist Monica Sjöö (b.1931 Härnösand d.2005 Bristol) is presented alongside Hebson’s own. In response to the conditions of this current moment and Hebson’s own circumstance as a new mother, the exhibition, rather than offering conclusions, seeks instead to initiate dialogue around Sjöö’s expanded legacy and the intimate relationship between her painting, graphic design, activism and matriarchal scholarship as well as her role as an early exponent of the Goddess movement. Scène d’Amour is intended as both an introduction and an opportunity to pay close attention: where Hebson’s private comprehension of Sjöö’s work can form.

Nadia Hebson, Joy, 2021 & Monica Sjö, God Giving Birth, 1968

Monica Sjö, God Giving Birth, 1968

Nadia Hebson, Autoritratto, 2019

Nadia Hebson, The Conditions (Yves Saint Laurent, 1976), 2019-20

Nadia Hebson, The Conditions (Yves Saint Laurent, 1976), 2019-20. & Joy, 2021

Nadia Hebson, Scène d'Amour, installation shot.

Nadia Hebson, The Conditions, 2019 & Monica Sjöö, Aspects of The Great Mother, 1971

Nadia Hebson, Fertility Complex, 2021

Portrait, (Monica Sjöö), 1977, 12.06 min., dir. Jane Jackson & Nadia Hebson, Fertility Complex, 2021

Nadia Hebson, Joy, 2021

In parallel with the exhibition, Hebson has invited artists, art historians, curators and colleagues/friends to share in company their consideration and responses to Sjöö’s practice through public discussion and a screening. Over the course of the exhibition Hebson will realise new work and text in response to this concentrated period of exchange and contemplation, which will be installed sporadically throughout its duration. 

Nadia Hebson is a British artist and educator based in Sweden. She uses painting, objects, large scale prints, apparel and text, to explore the work and biographies of older colleagues, including: American painter Christina Ramberg, British painters Winifred Knights and Marion Adnams  and most recently, Dora Gordine as part of the Dorich House Museum Studio Residency, Kingston University, London. 

Thank you Museum Anna Nordlander and the Swedish Labour Movement’s Archives and Library

Programme

The artistic project: The factory girls – The wilful textile worker organize an exhibition and  conference at Mint Art Gallery in the ABF building in Stockholm. The conference wants to  highlight and discuss the conditions, knowledge and resistance of women in the textile and home  industry; their willingness and self-will, which is expressed in organization, professional pride and  strategies. During the week, parts of the play Fabriksflickorna – makten och härligheten [The  Factory Girls – The Power and Glory] are reactivated, in an exhibition by Åsa Norman (Sweden)  textile artist, and Frida Hållander (Sweden) PhD, craft artist. The play premiered in Skellefteå  under the direction of Suzanne Osten and Margareta Garpe in 1980.  

In the exhibition, Norman and Hållander show parts of the multi-year artistic project The Factory  girls – The Willful Textile Worker through material and crafts investigations – as well as archive  material and sound. Artists and researchers are invited to the conference. They will hold  workshops and presentations to create a Nordic context for an in-depth discussion on textile  production and the home industry.  

The project is carried out with support from the Nordic Culture Fund, The Swedish Arts Grants  Committee, the Helge Ax:son Johnssons stiftelse, Byggnads kulturstipendium, and in collaboration with Iaspis. The exhibition and conference is part of Stockholm Craft Week 2020.

Conference Week Program:  

Thursday October 1 Conference day 1, all lectures are in Katasalen at the first floor in ABF huset  

The exhibition is open 12:00-18:00  

10:00-11:30 Introductory presentation and lecture by Åsa Norman (Sweden) textile artist and  Frida Hållander (Sweden) PhD, craft artist, presents the ongoing artistic project Factory girls –  The Willful Textile Workers. Tjia Torpe (Sweden) educator and producer will tell about the play  Fabriksflickorna – makten och härligheten [The Factory Girls – The Power and Glory]. Language:  Swedish. 

13:00-14:30 Leena Enbom (Finland) doctoral researcher in Social and Economic History in the  University of Helsinki. The lecture will shed light on the variations of home industries that  appeared as part of the secondary labour market in the urbanizing Finland from the late 19^th century until the 1960s. Additionally, the lecture will discuss the disciplinary functions of the  workhouse and relief work institutions based on the obligation to perform crafts and sewing tasks.  Language: English.

15.00-16:30 Lecture with Malin Nilsson (Sweden) PhD Economic History, researcher at the  Department of Economic History at Lund University. She will present her dissertation Taking work  home: Labor dynamics of women industrial homeworkers in Sweden during the second industrial  revolution (2015). Nilsson’s talk will also focus on how women’s commercial home based textile  production became a highly politicized topic in Europe in the late 19^th century. Language:  Swedish.  

Friday October 2 Conference day 2, all lectures are in Katasalen at the first floor in ABF-huset The exhibition is open 12:00-18:00 

10:00-11:30 Sushmita Preetha (Bangladesh) journalist, writer and researcher, together with Karin  Elfving (Sweden) journalist and ethnologist. The lecture will be based on testimonies from textile  workers in Bangladesh were it is describe how their rights are constantly violated, also how  Covid-19 has pushed these workers into further difficulties. Preetha and Elfving will also include  the response from some of the Swedish brands. Language: English.  

13:00-14:30 Lecture with Franz Petter Schmidt (Norway) Associate Professor of Textile Art at  KhiO – Oslo School of Fine Arts, textile artist and artistic researcher. Schmidt will present his  artistic dissertation project Reflection, Weaving Fabrics for Suits (2018), which touches on the  textile factory Sjølingstad Woolen Mill in Norway, and textile industry production through feeling,  longing, belonging, memory, pride and being queer. He will also present an ongoing project on a  diary written from 1925 to 1942 by the weaver Malli Berge. Language: Norwegian.  

15:00-16:30 Emelie Röndahl (Sweden) PhD student at HDK – Gothenburg University in the Arts,  presents her ongoing artistic dissertation project “Crying Pixels: a practitioner’s narrative through  woven rya – aspects of time in hand made practice”. Language: Swedish. 

Saturday October 3 Conference day 3, all lectures are in Hjärtat at the entrance level at ABF huset  

The exhibition is open 12:00-18:00 

11:00-12:30 Munish Wadhia (Sweden) artist, will present his ongoing work on the match industry  Jönköping’s Match Factory AB. Wadhia will also present his work “Signs taken for wonders” in  which he returns to the images and objects that surrounded him during his childhood, but with a  decolonial gaze that questions their given meanings, here he refers to the experience from  different textile factories. Language: English.  

13:00-14:00 Marie Hållander (Sweden) freelance poet and lecturer at Södertörn University.  Hållander will present the literary project “Among the girls and machines of the textile dust”  where she starts from textile stories and archives from Sjuhärad in Västergötland. Language:  Swedish.  

14:00-14:30 Nino Mick (Sweden) poet and writer, they will read an adapted version of a novel in  progress that delas about Berta Bäckman (b. 1860) and other factory worker that works in a match  factory in Tidaholm. The historical novel moves on two times, 1875 – the time of the great fire in  the factory where 50 girls perished, 1909 – the Swedish general strike. Language: Swedish. 

15:00-17:00 Go-slow action, along Sveavägen, start outside the ABF-house, public performance  led by Frida Hållander & Åsa Norman.  

Sunday October 4 

The exhibition is open 12:00-16:00 

With generous support from Konstnärsnämnden, Nordisk kulturfond, Helge Ax:son Johnssons stiftelse and Byggnads kulturstipendium in collaboration with Iaspis.

Illustration: Hanna Stenman