@MEDELHAVSMUSEET

A Quiet Spring Wanders Through the Apartment (original title En tyst vår vandrar genom lägenheten) takes its point of departure in the rooms we create for our being. These rooms can be physical places, but also mental states that enable interpersonal encounters as well as introspection and a shield from the noise of the outside world.

In this moment, when our society has been shaken to its core, we have been forced to relate to a whole new set of limitations and to create new conditions for how we meet. There has been a displacement between the private and public, and social conventions are being renegotiated and adapted to a new reality. Our conversations (often at a distance) have revolved around both the longing to be part of a community and how it can be reconciled with the need for privacy. What are the conditions for togetherness? When is the seclusion self-selected and when is it involuntary and isolating? Regardless of personal circumstances, we are all part of a greater context and need to relate to it in one way or another. These thoughts are not unique to the time we live in – they recur in artistic practice and accommodate an abundance of perspectives.

The exhibition brings together works from Magasin III’s collection that invite thoughts of the individual’s relationship to their broader context. The works evoke associations to issues of safety, personal freedom, restrictions and introversion – often with multifaceted perspectives.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the work En tyst vår vandrar genom lägenheten from 2015 by Jockum Nordström which took our thoughts to a silence, a pause, which may seem both trying and harmonious at the same time. By approaching these collected works, created between c. 1950 and 2018, we have found entryways to reflect on our current moment.

MAMI : AMA : MÖDRAR är en kollektiv process där 9 olika konstnärer och kulturarbetare gått ihop för att skapa en utställning som belyser och gestaltar mödrarnas berättelser.

”Vi är barnen som bevittnat hur våra mödrars liv trasats sönder av en arbetsmarknad med låga löner och slitsamt kroppsarbete, mödrar som kastats ur systemet rakt in i fattigdom.

Deras liv är en spegling av ett ekonomiskt system som bygger på ojämlikhet vilket har bidragit till deras undergång. Som barn vill vi bryta den tystnad och isolering som omgärdat våra mödrars liv. Vi vill skriva in deras berättelser i historien och tala om de styrkor, omhändertaganden och kärleksförklaringar som rört sig i det tysta.”

Bland verken synliggo¨rs de komplexa relationerna mellan mor och barn, vittnesma°l till mo¨drar som ba¨r pa° migrationens erfarenhet, och det ofta absurda i mo¨tet med va¨lfa¨rdssamha¨llets olika system. Ha¨r fa°r vi a¨ven ta del av intima bera¨ttelser fra°n vardagen vilka varvas med bera¨ttelser som ekar genom generationer. I utsta¨llningen visas skulpturer, ljudverk, storskaliga och interaktiva installationer, video, ett deltagarbaserat textverk, ma°leri, performance, fotografi, onlineverk och en konstaktion.

Utställningen skapades i samarbete med Botkyrka konsthall, med vernissage den 29 augusti 2020 och visades fram till den 16 januari 2021.

Index presents Pauline Curnier Jardin’s first solo exhibition in Sweden opening Thursday, 2 September 2021.

For the exhibition, Index transforms into a hybrid space between presentation and production where visitors can observe Curnier Jardin’s previous films and gain insight into her ongoing working process for the production of a forthcoming film. Hence, the exhibition takes as a starting point an artwork that actually doesn’t exist, but through the inclusion of a selection of completed works by the artist and information about her practice, one can previsualize options for what it could possibly become.

The exhibition space conceptually supports the upcoming work’s production, functioning as a changing machine rather than offering a defined result. Some aspects of this future artwork will be developed during the exhibition time through production gatherings where reference materials will be observed and collected for the artist to use. The Index team will be working on-site to gather information and facilitate the production of this new work.

Visiting Pauline Curnier Jardin’s exhibition means the opportunity to witness and contribute to the seed of an artist’s idea while simultaneously experiencing previous pieces from Curnier Jardin’s filmic and artistic oeuvre.

Pauline Curnier Jardin works with films and installation offering unexpected ways to understand narrative. She includes historical references, symbolic content, operatic gestures, musical scores, performativity and several approaches to desire and repulsion which in turn raise questions about feelings, ideas and information. Her layered practice moves from physicality to sensitivity, from image culture to secret languages, from surrealistic chaos to narrative structure. Opera or Classical theatre could be possible symbolic frames for Curnier Jardin’s work as it emotionally and subjectively moves the spectator.

For this exhibition, Index is collaborating with the Amsterdam-based art organization, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and their online space, ificantdance.studio, will host a poetic mirror following the process of the conceptual production at Index.


Index is supported by Kulturrådet, Region Stockholm and Stockholms Stad. Thanks to the French Institute of Sweden for additional support of Pauline Curnier Jardin’s exhibition.

Pauline Curnier Jardin (b. 1980, Marseille, France) is a Berlin and Rome-based artist working across installation, performance, film and drawing. She is the winner of the 2019 German Preis der Nationalgalerie, the 2021 Villa Romana Prize in Firenze and recipient of the 2019-2020 Villa Medici fellowship in Rome. Her work was included or commissioned over the last years in Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz; Manifesta 13, Marseille; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Bergen Assembly, Bergen Biennial; International Film Festival, Rotterdam; the 57th Venice Biennale; Tate Modern, London; Performa 15, New York. Curnier Jardin’s solo exhibition, “Fat to Ashes” was recently on display at Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin and she has an upcoming solo exhibition at Art Basel in 2021. She will also participate in the group exhibitions at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino; Galeria Municipal do Porto, Portugal; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

Mint presents A Careful Strike*; a group show that departs from the monumental painting The History of the Workers Movement by the sheet metal worker, musician and artist Ruben Nilson (1893–1971), permanently installed at ABF Stockholm. Painted during a ten year period around 1940. Following a tradition of workers’ art, the collective struggle for emancipation is at the centre of Nilson’s painting. The exhibition follows Nilson’s artwork both in its ambition and challenge: What does the reproduction of a movement’s history entail? What different roles can art play in social movements and through which expressions? How is art engaged in today’s movements? A dialogue with the specific struggles and the histories that inform Nilson’s composition of intertwined visual narratives, structured through visible conjoined cuts form the curatorial framework of the exhibition. The works historical connections to contemporary situations are put in relation to what is missing within the frame – the histories and experiences that are left out while establishing a prevalent worker’s history. A Careful Strike* is an exhibition and a public program (that preceded the exhibition during the fall of 2020), where workers’ art is confronted with Swedish and international contemporary works. The form and history of social movements are reflected through situated experiences of migration, care, exploitation and struggle. Through songs, poetry, talks, and artworks historical events and issues are made visible in a conversation on our current condition. What do we need to remember and what is to be done to win back the future? *The exhibition borrows its title from the militant feminist collective Precarias a la deriva (Precarious women adrift) 2004. The collective was formed in Madrid in 2002 in reaction to the male-dominated unions that were organising a general strike in reaction to labour law reforms in Spain. Precarias a la deriva wanted to highlight the challenges many face in participating in strikes, due to a reality of precarious employment and a higher burden of reproductive work. They wanted to create a collective situated narrative on the general tendency toward the precarization of life they were experiencing and the ways to revolt and resist in our everyday lives. – Precarias a la deriva, Una huelga de mucho cuidado (Cuatro hipótesis), 2004. The exhibition is produced with generous support from The Worker Movement’s Culture Fund, The Swedish Arts Council and The City of Stockholm.