June 2023 / Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation

Index autumn program 2023 – four exhibitions presented at Index and other locations

Catti Brandelius, MISS UNIVERSUM 1997-2005 (+2023), at Index
Opening: Friday 21 September

Index presents an exhibition observing the character “Miss Universum” created and performed by Catti Brandelius. From 1997 to 2005, Catti Brandelius – as Miss Universum – produced films, pamphlets, poems, fanzines, events and songs with specific feminist content.

In 2023 the exhibition attends to the multiplicity of the character, inviting in a spectrum of voices and opinions from Katarina Bonnevier, Maryam Fanni, Anna Kinbom, Johan Lundin and Andria Nyberg Forshage. The exhibition presents an exhaustive approach to what Miss Universum meant during the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s, creating a documentary setting and a platform to observe the work from contemporary perspectives.

Miss Universum is one of many alter-egos used by Catti Brandelius to investigate politics, art and feminism. Music is an essential part of many of Catti Brandelius´ works – Miss Universum was originally a band member in the band Doktor Kosmos.
More

THE IMPERSONAL VERB AND THE HIDDEN SUBJECT, at La Capella, Barcelona
Opening: Tuesday 3 October

Index organizes an exhibition in Barcelona as part of an institutional dialogue with La Capella. The exhibition implements Index’ institutional methodology, offering La Capella a way of working with artistic practice based on a desire for connecting situations, approaching complexity, and experimenting with temporalities.

The starting point of the exhibition will be a working table presenting archive material and a selection of video works that visitors and La Capella team can interact with. The exhibition space will be defined by artistic works by Johanna Gustafsson Fürst. The La Capella team will relate to the presented material and formulate dialogues with artists from Barcelona working in parallel fields.

Participating artists: Kajsa Dahlberg, Roxy Farhat, Nathalie Gabrielsson and Peter Sköld, Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Saskia Holmkvist, Runo Lagomarsino, Iris Smeds, Ulrika Sparre, Victoria Verseau and Alva Willemark & Sybrig Dokter.
More

Kajsa Dahlberg, THE TIDAL ZONE at Havremagasinet, Boden
Opening: Saturday 14 October

Investigating relationships between images, objects and subjects, Kajsa Dahlberg’s exhibition THE TIDAL ZONE was on view at Index from November 2022 – 12 February 2023. This autumn, the exhibition will be presented at Havremagasinet in Boden.

In THE TIDAL ZONE, Kajsa Dahlberg offers a series of connections between the individual and the collective, structures and bodies, reception, and perception. Observing historical material (in process) and juxtaposing it with specific subjective narratives, Dahlberg weaves multiple discourses where the emotional and the political become unstable arenas in permanent negotiation.
More

BODIES AND ANTIBODIES at Index
Opening: Friday 17 November

The exhibition BODIES AND ANTIBODIES presents multiple dialogues around the construction of the body, connecting identity, gender, material, performativity and process. Two video-based works by Cassie Augusta Jørgensen and Maja Malou Lyse define the time frame, where sculptural works by Malin Hallgren and Erika Stöckel become objects in a continuous exchange.

The constellation of artistic works creates an interplay of positions: the body as subject and object, vessel and commodity, resisting and succumbing to the values ascribed. Does the body have the agency to exhibit itself or is it unwillingly exposed? The voice – and the possibility of having a voice – resonates in the exhibition as a political desire to dismantle the status quo.
More

Jordan Strafer, LOOPHOLE open through summer
Finissage: Sunday 27 August

Jordan Strafer’s exhibition LOOPHOLE is on view throughout the summer. (Please note Index is closed over midsummer, 22-25 June). LOOPHOLE concludes in a finissage with a talk by curator Sonja Lau, connecting perspectives on feminism, language and the law.

In LOOPHOLE, Jordan Strafer combines many symbolic representations of power related to image culture. The film work is inspired by the true story of the 1991 trial of William Kennedy Smith (John F. Kennedy’s nephew) who was accused of the rape of 29-year-old Patricia Bowman. The court case was televised and attracted extensive media coverage, with millions of viewers watching the event. The jury acquitted William Kennedy Smith of all charges and later the lead defense attorney married one of the jurors.

With imagined scenarios and re-enactments based on court transcripts combined with poetic and cinematic fictions, Strafer takes a genre popular at that time – the erotic thriller – to combine desire and law, power and systemic questions, sexuality and fear.
More