Annika Eriksson is the recipient of the 2024 Sundén Art Foundation Award, making her the Foundation’s second awardee.
The jury’s statement follows:
“Annika Eriksson has created seminal works that have been exhibited widely internationally. Since the early 1990s, she has developed a unique artistic practice spanning film, photography, performance and installation. Her works recurrently depict social interactions between individuals and groups against the backdrop of a society that both nurtures and abandons. Despite distinctive frameworks, Eriksson leaves room for the unpredictable, for freedom and experimentation. The result is an artistic practice that never becomes rigid, that remains thought-provoking, slippery yet precise, and wondrous.”
In her early works, Annika Eriksson (born 1956, Malmö) staged real-life, social situations in front of the camera, emphasizing process, strongly influenced by the artist’s negotiations and agreements with the participants. Her artistic practice has continually developed, morphed and sharpened its artistic expression and political acuity. In recent years, her focus has increasingly shifted towards installation and video, in extended formats where elements such as collage and moving image contribute to scenarios. The resulting works are rooted in reality, whilst suggesting its instability and plurality, sometimes with considerations of—and an explicit empathy for—animal subjects and consciousness.
Annika Eriksson has been based in Berlin since 2002. Select exhibitions include presentations at CCA Wattis, San Francisco; Moderna Museet Malmö; Tate Liverpool; Bonner Kunstverein, as well as participation in biennials including São Paulo, Venice, Shanghai and Istanbul. Since 2021, Eriksson has an ongoing collaboration with Fatima Hellberg, making work and interventions as Ada Frände.
Through the award, the Foundation would like to highlight and celebrate influential artistic practices in Swedish contemporary art that have developed a profound, multifaceted body of work and therefore deserve recognition. The Foundation’s first award was granted to the multifaceted artist, musician, and mathematician Catherine Christer Hennix (1948–2023).
The 2024 jury consists of Emily Fahlén, curator and artistic director of Mint; Carl Hammoud, visual artist; Ann-Sofi Noring, former director of Moderna Museet and Mats Stjernstedt, director of Malmö Konsthall.
The Sundén Art Foundation was established in 2022 by siblings Annika and Anders Sundén. The Foundation supports Swedish contemporary art through an annual award. This recognition is granted to an experienced visual artist who has shown quality, originality and innovation in their body of work and built a practice that the Foundation would like to highlight. The 2024 award is in the amount of 200 000 Swedish SEK.
