Johanna Billing
dal 6/8/2001 al 3/9/2001
Segnalato da
6/8/2001
Johanna Billing
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Johanna Billing's art often involves cooperation with other people who, in various ways, contribute towards the realisation of the work. In Graduate Show (1999), she invited all the art students in their final year at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) to do something together an exceedingly unusual event at this individualistic art school. Twenty out of the 100 students agreed to rehearse and participate in a dance show, which would be recorded by a professional choreographer. The video of the Graduate Show recalls the TV series Fame, but the art school dancers remain happy amateurs who nevertheless risk bringing disgrace upon their personal "brand"
Johanna Billing's art often involves cooperation with other people who, in various ways, contribute towards
the realisation of the work. In Graduate Show (1999), she invited all the art students in their final year at
the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) to do something together an exceedingly
unusual event at this individualistic art school. Twenty out of the 100 students agreed to rehearse and
participate in a dance show, which would be recorded by a professional choreographer. The video of the
Graduate Show recalls the TV series Fame, but the art school dancers remain happy amateurs who
nevertheless risk bringing disgrace upon their personal "brand".
Billing's Project for a Revolution (2000) has its point of departure in Michelangelo Antonioni's film,
Zabriskie Point from 1970, but the events in the video are set in present-day Sweden. A group of young
people, students, is silently and passively gathered to what seems to be a meeting in a schoolroom. The
video is about the individual's relationship to the collective or the group and how young people of today
express their engagement. Questions around protest and trendiness in relation to popular culture are
central to much of Johanna Billing's work; she is interested in how resistance sloughs off its skin.
Together with her brother, Johanna Billing runs Make It Happen, a social platform for music and art, which,
among other things, produces music that has difficulties getting heard in the usual music venues. Make It
Happen has also been behind a number of popular events at Backstage, Stockholm Municipal Theatre
(Stockholms Stadsteater). Billing is a member of the artists' group, swe.de, whose exhibition with the same
name was produced by the National Programme of Touring Exhibitions (Riksutställningar) and shown at the
Uppsala Art Museum (Uppsala Konstmuseum) and Sandviken's Municipal Art Gallery (Sandvikens
Konsthall). Recently she participated in a group show in Tirana. Dagens Nyheter PÃ¥ Stan (major national
newspaper and its arts and entertainment supplement) designated her one of the twelve "heroes of the
year" because "if /Johanna Billing/ and the other eleven favourites did not exist, the spiritual air of
Stockholm would not be half so pleasing to breath".
Johanna Billing was born in 1973 in Jönköping and resides in Stockholm. Her Modern Museet Projekt is
undertaken in cooperation with Oslo Konsthall.
Curator: Maria Lind
Opening Hours:
Tuesday to Thursday 11-00 - 20.00 Friday to Sunday 11.00 - 18.00 Monday closed