Potatisätarna (The Potato-Eaters)
Röda Sten Konsthall, 13 july - 24 August 2025
Exhibition with Astrid Göransson and Unni Britta Kangas, curated by Amila Puzić and Mia Christersdotter Norman.
“Minnet: a story about an apron.” The starting point for this project was when Magdalena Andersson (former prime minister of Sweden, and current leader of the social democrats) wore the Rackey Folkcostume to the opening of parliament in 2019. This folkcostume is from Skaraborg, the area where my family is from, and I became interested in the reaction it provoked in the local area. I decided to design a new pattern for the apron to go with the Rackeby folkcostume. This one tells the story of my great grandfather, who was born a landless peasent in 1866 but later emigrated to the USA only to return a few years later with the first rubber boots anyone had seen in the area and enough money to by land.
It is painted using natural dyes, including madder from Europe, cochineal from the Americas, and cutch from India. The pattern includes Van Gogh’s “peasant shoes”, a pair of rubber boots, and the plant, greater plaintain (plantago major) which spread across the USA with European settlers leading the native Americans to call it “White Men’s Footprints.”
A giant handpainted version of this apron was displayed in the “cathedral” of Röda Sten konsthall, while I sent a normal sized version to Magdalena Andersson in the hopes that she wears it to the next opening of parliament - reminding us all of Sweden’s history as an emigrant nation.
Project realised with the support of:
“The Alt-right Coprolite”. Paintings and an extra long 8 metre apron based upon the Lloyds Bank coprolite - the world’s largest fossilsed human poo. Folk costume has a history of being used by the right wing to project ethno-nationalist fantasies. This entailed fossiling in culture, which in turn reminds me of this fossilised faeces. I speculate that the far right would love this coprolite since it was made by a viking who ate mostly meat. This is why I name it the alt-right coprolite. The paintings have been painted with an iron rich sand made as a by product from the extraction of phosphates from sewage ash by the company Easy Mining.