Fine Art

This year’s class decided early on to organise their degree exhibition on their own. The desire to create a shared place to formulate and speak from was a joint approach that was also intended to position the class as its own group. A body in a department that speaks with its own voice and does so from its own place. Applying to an established art institution to present the degree exhibition for the master´s programme in Fine Art felt natural to them.

This year’s exhibition is taking place at the same time as two wars are raging in our vicinity. Something that did not pass unnoticed but rather resonated in us all, and of course also coloured the conversations that took place in the fine art programme. Conversations have been initiated and organized by the students, and the students have reacted and acted – and done so on their own initiative.

The body in society has been discussed, and what happens with it when it ends up in friction with the outside world, both as a physical object and as a thinking and feeling human being. The importance of listening to own’s own voice has been highlighted.

If the political is personal, then the works that have taken shape in the studios of this group of artists are all reactions from individuals who see themselves as political bodies in a common societal body.

In their best moments, an art education can encompass yet another education within the primary one. An education in which students have conversations and share critique and ideas with each other. The works that are shown and the artists taking part in the exhibition have all had strong relationships with the world around them and with each other’s works, and have created the exhibition they are presenting this year based on shared dialogue. Formally, it is as it should be: extremely varied, and we encounter works with completely different expressions and characters – nothing strange there. But the works are held together by a strong common desire to ask questions about who we are and who we will become at a time in which the world around us is constantly making its presence felt. Art becomes a lens through which to view this world.

Thomas Elovsson
Professor of Fine Art