A Careful Strike*

Bini Adamczak, Diana Agunbiade-Kolawole, Black Audio Film Collective (John Akomfrah), Henrik Andersson, Problem Collective, Chto Delat, Harun Farocki, Dora García, Benj Gerdes, Salad Hilowle, Sam Hultin, Ingela Johansson, Hanni Kamaly, Patrick Kretschek, Mattin, Minus Miele, Ruben Nilson, Behzad Khosravi Noori, Gudrun Olsson, Oliver Ressler, Bella Rune, Katarina Pirak Sikku, Iris Smeds, Hito Steyerl, Margareta Ståhl, Hannah Wiker Wikström

Programme:
17.9 2020 – 21.2 2021
Exhibition:
7.10 2021 – 11.12 2021

Mint, ABF Stockholm, Sveavägen 41, Stockholm


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