Åsa Sonjasdotter: Cultivating Abundance
June 1–August 25, 2024
Lunds konsthall is very proud to present two parallel solo exhibitions, one by Agnes Denes (born in Budapest in 1931, grew up in Stockholm, lives in New York) and one by Åsa Sonjasdotter (born in Helsingborg in 1966, grew up in Lund, lives on the island of Ven and in Berlin). In their works, both artists speak of the importance to act in the face of climate change and other destructive processes affecting our surroundings and invite us to think about how we may influence our future.
Agnes Denes is a pioneer within the artistic genre of Land Art and the ecological debate. Since the 1960s she has used artistic as well as scientific, mathematical and philosophical methods to investigate and influence humankind’s impact on the environment.
Åsa Sonjasdotter combines the cultivation of plants with archival research to investigate social and ecological relations and contexts. Her works reactivate overlooked knowledge about cultivation and insist that genetic information coded into common crops is a memory bank for humans and plants.
Both exhibitions involve new productions with site-specific dimensions. Denes’s Time Capsule consists of a capsule with messages to the future that will be collected throughout the exhibition. After the collection the capsule will be ritually buried and laid to rest for 1000 years. Denes has also realised the film Bird Migration as a public piece for the City of Lund, based on a concept she formulated already when she lived in Sweden as a teenager.
Sonjasdotter has produced new versions of existing projects around the cultivation of grain, potatoes and kale. The atrium at Lunds konsthall has been converted into a cultivation space showcasing new thinking about how we may relate to what nature offers and what we need. She has also initiated a cultivation project together with the civil society at Brunnshög, and during the exhibition a bus trip will be organised to the Källunda farm in Häglinge, to visit the seed bank and the ongoing work of the Allkorn association.
Curators: Laura Goldschmidt and Åsa Nacking