Sara Lindeborg, Selma Sjöstedt, Angelica Falkeling: A Malmö Trilogy: Shepherdess and Other Exilic Vernaculars

One single scene is told from a number of different perspectives. We recognise this approach from the world of cinema, theatre, literature, but what if we were to present an exhibition this way?

Three artists have been invited to work on one exhibition which will be told in three chapters throughout the year. Each chapter has a leading voice, yet each chapter is the sum of a collaborative exploration that guides us through the multiple folds that compose an artistic practice. Idiosyncratic, unexpected, inconsistent bare meanings we like. So much more fulfilling than recognisable, safe and deliverable. But as we all know, such an approach to one’s work takes courage and support. So we ask ourselves what kind of art world we want to be part of. How can we act on the structures, and not just the choices.

The leading voice of the third chapter is Sara Lindeborg, a voice that reverberates art history saturated with feminism and painterly ethics. She traces the ancient history of ornaments and vernacular migrations that compose the world as we know it today. Gradually, a dispersed pastoral emerges out of exilic strategies and the longing for another world. Raising the question of sharing and thus exposing one’s inner most concerns at stake, both Selma Sjöstedt and Angelica Falkeling respond with works that balance this fine line between the personal and the universal. Their works echo the mutuality of lived experiences, from the impossibility of longing for something immaterial, to be something one is not, to the very matter of fact decisions we face in our lives. Slowly and gently, a contamination of the individual practice gives way for the rise of a collaborative endeavour that transgresses any imposed limitation of a signature style.

We tell each other stories in order to live. We tell each other stories in order to dream and imagine, to let ideas slowly percolate through our minds and shape a larger collective consciousness. Shepherdess and Other Exilic Vernaculars is the third and final chapter of A Malmö Trilogy.