Phoebe Boswell: Here

Göteborgs Konsthall is proud to present the exhibition Here, the first Scandinavian solo exhibition of Kenyan-British artist Phoebe Boswell. Boswell’s multidisciplinary art practice is anchored to a restless state of diasporic consciousness and engages in questions of collective memory, personal identity and what it means to be “home.” She creates layered, deeply immersive multimedia installations which center and amplify histories that—like her own—are often systemically marginalized.

The exhibition Here at Göteborgs Konsthall, brings together distinct themes in the artist’s oeuvre which each address what it means to belong, particularly from the perspective of the racialized, sexualized and gendered “other.” Phoebe Boswell takes us on a journey that begins by observing the social structure of the city of Göteborg from the point of view of an outsider; she then invites us to join a protest of animated women insisting themselves upon the male dominated space of the art gallery; and concludes in an interrogation of the interiority of the body, with an emotive response to grief, healing, and the poetics of endurance, which encourages the audience to remember that, even at times of deep trauma, we are, indeed, still here. The works in the exhibition bear witness to the artist´s own personal journey, using art-making to explore a landscape of migration, trauma and resistance. As such, she invites us to witness a voyage of discovery, resilience and possible renewal.  

Phoebe Boswell (b. 1982, Kenya) is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in London where she studied at the Slade School of Art and Central St Martins. She is currently the Bridget Riley Drawing Fellow at the British School at Rome, a Ford Foundation Fellow, and is represented in the United States by Sapar Contemporary, New York. Her work has been widely exhibited with galleries including Carroll / Fletcher, Tiwani Contemporary and New Art Exchange; at art fairs including Art15, 1:54 and Expo Chicago; and has screened films at Sundance, the London Film Festival, LA Film Festival, Blackstar, Underwire, British Animation Awards, and CinemAfrica in Stockholm amongst others. She participated in the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art 2015 and was commissioned to make a new work for the Biennial of Moving Images 2016 at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva. Boswell was the first recipient of the Sky Academy Arts Scholarship, was awarded the Special Prize at the Future Generation Art Prize as part of the 57th Venice Biennale, and has recently opened her first institutional solo exhibition The Space Between Things at Autograph in London, which will run until March 30, 2019.

The exhibition Here is curated by Liv Stoltz, curator at Göteborgs Konsthall and presented in association with exhibition partner, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK. Here will open at New Art Exchange in April 2020.

Selected program highlights

Sunday, February 3, 2pm
Artist talk between Phoebe Boswell, poet Athena Farrokzad and artist Nina Mangalanayagam. Moderated by Ann Ighe, editor-in-chief of the journal Ord&Bild. Location: Göteborg City Library

Saturday, February 16, 2pm
Black Light—a film program with African and diasporic filmmakers curated by Temi Odumosu, curator and post doctoral researcher for the Living Archives Research Project at Malmö University. Performance Flyktinglandet with artist Fatima Moallim.

Saturday, March 9, 2pm
Art from the Parallel Society - the Movement of Bodies and Art, a program with performance, poetry, art and music curated by poet Suad Omar.

Saturday, March 30, 1:30pm
A presentation on the life and ideas of American author and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin by Aleksander Motturi. Flmscreening of Karen Thorsen´s film James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket and release of the book The Fire Next Time (1963) by James Baldwin, with a new foreword by Aleksander Motturi.

View the full program at konsthallen.goteborg.se