Ann-Sofi Siden
dal 28/8/2008 al 11/10/2008
Segnalato da
28/8/2008
Ann-Sofi Siden
Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm
The video installation "In Passing" is the story of a young woman who leaves her newborn baby at a "Baby Safe Haven" at a hospital in Berlin. In her moving and visually stunning work, the artist reflects on our views on motherhood and raises questions about what makes a mother abandon her child.
Bonniers Konsthall starts off the autumn season with Ann-Sofi Sidén's latest video installation, In Passing, which receives its premier presentation in Sweden. In Passing is the story of a young woman who leaves her newborn baby at a "Baby Safe Haven" at a hospital in Berlin. In her moving and visually stunning work, Ann-Sofi Sidén reflects on our views on motherhood and raises questions about what makes a mother abandon her child.
Ann-Sofi Sidén's video installation is part of a series of smaller exhibitions at Bonniers Konsthall, each presenting a new work by a pivotal contemporary artist. Since the mid-1990s, Ann-Sofi Sidén's art has played an important role in the art discourse both in Sweden and internationally. Bonniers Konsthall has previously shown films in this series by Salla Tykkä and Adrian Paci.
In Passing is a spatial video work in which the viewer is encouraged to move through the installation in order to experience all parts of the narrative. On two monitors and four large projection screens, we follow parallel stories featuring the woman and the child after their separation at the hospital's "Baby Safe Haven". As in many of her previous works, Ann-Sofi Sidén makes use of surveillance cameras, which in this instance show how the child is cared for of at the hospital. The black-and-white, documentary-feel images are interspersed with more feature-film-like sequences. Characteristic of Ann-Sofi Sidén's art, the mixing of genres blurs the border between reality and illusion.
Zeroing in on social behaviour, Ann-Sofi Sidén recurrently depicts both the human psyche and people at the crossroads, or in passing. As in Warte Mal! (1999), where she portrayed prostitutes in the new Europe, she often sets out from extreme situations, depicting them in an undramatic way. A concrete place and action serve the function of a point of departure in order to elucidate a larger structure. With strong personal engagement, Ann-Sofi Sidén depicts some of our most pressing contemporary issues, leaving it up to the viewer to piece together the kaleidoscopic stories.
Ann-Sofi Sidén (b. 1962) is a prominent international artist. In recent years she has held solo exhibitions in Vienna, Madrid and Berlin. In Sweden, her work was most recently presented at Moderna Museet in 2005 and at Liljevalchs Konsthall in 2006. Ann-Sofi Sidén was educated at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, where she is Professor of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Stockholm and Berlin. In Passing has previously been presented at Galerie Barbara Thumm in Berlin and Galeria Pepe Cobo in Madrid, and can also be viewed at Kiasma in Helsinki.
Bonniers Konsthall
Torsgatan 19 - Stockholm