DEFENCE
14 – 16 August
Skeppsholmen, Stockholm
Henrik Andersson
Kutluğ Ataman
Kader Attia
Juan Pedro Fabra
Martina Lowden
Maria Heimer Åkerlund
Curator: Magdalena Malm
DEFENCE includes work by five artists and one author, all treating the subject of our internal as well as external defence mechanisms, the physical as well as psychological.
What are the major threats of our times? What defence strategies do we develop for use in different situations? And how can we tell the difference between defence from concrete threats and defence from our own fear of them?
MAP presents projects in sites and media relating to the content of the work. The sites of this exhibition are bunkers, watchtowers and boats on the islands of Skeppsholmen in Stockholm, which for many years served as base for the Swedish marines. Today, the islands are transformed. Setting out from the history of the location, the exhibition DEFENCE discusses changes in our perception of threats and the need for defence.
In an abandoned fortification underneath Kastellholmen, Kader Attia’s Oil and Sugar #2 presents an image of thoughts that we prefer to repress, so we can carry on driving to work. In one of the watchtowers – now transformed into invisible landmarks – Henrik Andersson has installed real-time sound recordings from the surrounding sea. The work disuses surveillance and what role interpretation plays in it.
At first glance, Juan Pedro Fabra’s masked snipers resemble mythical being from Swedish forests, demonstrating the connection between territory and nature. In Testimony Kutlug Ataman reflects on how a nation can live in collective amnesia. His father’s nanny tells us about the Armenian-Turkish conflict but the story is obscured by dementia and memory loss.
Maria Heimer Åkerlund focuses on the split in a person who, at the same time, is both a soldier and a civilian. How can one reconcile the fact of shattering someone else’s family in order to defend one’s own? Martina Lowden’s text illustrates a fortification of ones own brain.
MAP, Mobile Art Production, is a new art producer that invites artists to create unique projects. In dialogue with the artists, MAP locates the most suitable situation, moment, and site to produce and exhibit art. Founding director of MAP is Magdalena Malm.
The exhibition DEFENCE is produced by MAP in collaboration with Stockholm’s Culture Festival and The National Property Board. Thanks to The Foundation for the Culture of the Future, Längmanska Foundation, IASPIS and Showlighters.
