Installation, papier-mâché, gilded branch 2021 and 2024
video made in collaboration with Linus Johansson and Andrea Lundgren

The work of Helena Wikström seeks to go underground – below the surface. She digs dens, creates tunnels and descends below the earth’s crust and the surface of the water in search of a space of gravity, a space defined by the attraction of our bodies to the ground. In her work there is also a great curiosity about who populates these places, whether they are real beings or mythological figures. The story of the golden branch derives from the Aeneid and is about how Aeneas, in order to descend into the realm of the dead, must find the golden branch and break it from the tree, whereby a new branch would grow.

Helena Wikström (b. 1964 in Tingsryd) lives and works in Holmsund/Umeå. She mainly works with different types of installations containing film, photography, sound art and sculpture, often in collaboration with other artists, musicians and filmmakers. In addition to being involved in the artist-run gallery Verkligheten in Umeå, she works part-time as a curator for Vita kuben, Norrlandsoperan. Her work has been shown at Tromsö film festival, Bildmuseet, LCCA, Riga, National gallery, Prague, SVT and a large number of exhibitions, festivals, projects, nationally and internationally. Represented in several municipalities and county councils, the Modern Museum, Stockholm and the public art agency in Sweden.

Avivs argument
Site-specific work

Furniture and walls with holes cut through them, where visitors have to crawl through to reach new rooms.

In preparation for this work, I began studying old maps of the mines in the town of Boliden in northern Västerbotten. The way the maps looked reminded me of the larval chambers of bark beetles in trees. This made me think about how similar we humans are to bark beetles. Creators of organic tunnels that are not always visible but have a significant impact on their respective living environments. Mines that for many create wealth and prosperity, but at the same time create cavities and psychological wounds in others. While reading about mines and larval chambers, Israel launches its war on Gaza after October 7th. There is an Israeli military strategist named Aviv Kochavi, who developed a military strategy in the West Bank, where he describes one of the characteristics as being like a worm that eats through walls and roofs in Palestinian homes. I have tried to recreate this, to make the experience of being human-worms digging and moving through walls and furniture in our living environments, through the irreversible wounds and holes the process has created.

Barbro, was never scared
interactive audio work, 15 min

A while ago I found a couple of photographs I did not know existed. Photos of my grandmother as a child and of her family. Written underneath one of the photos: Barbro on a high ladder, was never scared.

Grandma,
that’s not true. You were indeed scared. Perhaps not back then, on that ladder, but later on, much later on. All those years I knew you. During that time you were always frightened, I could tell.

Why? What were you afraid of?

She strikes splines into cracks 
Sculpture

A tree falls and injures both the house and me 
Decomposes into the earth, becomes a home to new life 
But I take my share, joining and strikes splines into the cracks.

Inspired by Andrea Lundgren’s book The Underground Sun.

Michaela Frycklund (b. 1995, Härnösand) finds the distinction between the joy of building and art to be blurred, and her interest in construction takes over. She primarily works with wood and is drawn to using forgotten and found materials for her projects. By transforming wood from an old fence into sculptures and then placing them back in the same spot, she reflects on which voices are given space in urban planning and for whom it is designed.

The Graphics of Nature
Photographs

Blunt Angle
Iron Sculptures

Mattias has explored the dynamics between urban and rural settings, as well as humanity’s connection to nature and lost communities. His project includes documenting a mid-20th century school building with a focus on depicting the transformation that occurs when nature reclaims the space. The exhibition also features sculptures of utilitarian objects linked to the forestry industry, highlighting his broader interest in this subject through abstraction.

Mattias Olofsson (b. 1973, Skellefteå) studied at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts between 1999 and 2004. He lives and works in Umeå and Storbrännan. Through performance, sculpture, photography, installations, and film, he explores questions of identity in relation to belonging and exclusion. A recurring theme in his art is the exploration of how history influences our present. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at Moderna Museet, Bildmuseet, and ZKM in Karlsruhe. He has been involved in the artist-run project space Verkligheten since 2003.

Bår, port, bädd
Stretcher, gate, bed

Iron is buried in the soil. Together with oxygen it creates red rust smelling of blood. 

Iron is buried in the body. It binds the oxygen to the blood from the first breath to the last one.

In the room there are three shapes that are all capable of holding a body: a stretcher of steel, a gate of rust and a bed of soil. A bag is resting in the stretcher. Use the bellows to provide it with oxygen.

(Materials: Steel sheets, rust, soil, cotton terry, cotton fabric, silicone, aluminium, iron oxide, steel.)

Maria K Olsson (b. 1993) is based in Umeå. She received a bachelor’s degree from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in 2021. Since 2020, she has been a member of the artist-run gallery Verkligheten. Olsson works with installations and performance based on the agency and interaction of human and non-human bodies. Time is always a factor in her art regardless of the form in which it is presented. The contrast between slow processes in natural environments and the rapid processes driven by man particularly interests her.

Apparatus (1-6)
Ink drawings

Stumbling through an unformed world, whose rules and objectives are largely unknown, seemingly indecipherable, or even possibly non-existent, the gaze seeks equilibrium. The dream, the quest and an attempt to make sense, and form a narrative. 

Hannes Iversen (1984, Kristianstad, Sweden) lives and works in Umeå. In his work, he moves between sound, sculpture and drawing. With interest for materiality, texture and tactility, his work is a practice of reformulation, deciphering and bending notions of the mundane to convey that which may lie beyond. Since 2023 he runs the label Hemliga Skolan Produktion together with Jonna Iversen. 

Cure through Removal
Dry pastel, wall drawing

According to folklore, holes in strangely grown trees and tree roots were magic. If you pulled a child through such a hole, they were protected from different diseases. The procedure should be repeated according to magical numbers and the belief was that the disease was taken over by the tree. The Swedish term for this is ”cure through removal”. 

The starting point of this work is a series of photographs of holes in oddly shaped trees. Just like in folklore, where the procedure should be repeated a certain number of times, the artwork has been drawn in layer upon layer to create a sort of portal to another world.    

Hömyran
Photography and samples of meltwater

To walk on a mountain that otherwise is a pit. I wrote this one summer a few years ago when the amount of snow on the Hömyran snow dump site was so great that one could climb up onto a plateau of snow, sand and debris instead of sloshing down into a crazy pit. Likewise, it was 2023, the huge amounts of snow did not have time to melt away before the next winter came, similar to a glacier, but of anthropogenic origin. Cavities, labyrinthine passages are formed in the packed snow deposit with flows of polluted meltwater that flow into the waterways, into the bog and into the ground.

Fanny Carinasdotter (b.1978 in Avesta) lives and works in Umeå. She mainly works with photography and is interested in the history of places and humans’ (ab-)use of nature. In addition to Verkligheten, Carinasdotter is involved in the artist group Norrakollektivet, together they have exhibited at Moderna Museet and ArkDes in Stockholm, Havremagasinet in Boden and Bildmuseet in Umeå, among others.