Exhibitions

Sky's First Horse — Flower paper, acrylic paint, 74×154 cm, 2023

Can we go back in time? What happens when we look closely into old photographs and try to understand, to reconstruct the puzzle? My works transform and make objects travel through time, taking upon themselves new representations and meanings. I use flowers because I can shape them into new forms — each flower is different but can be labeled and catalogued. Preserving them, freezing them in time, is part of the game.

Paula created an installation of sun prints — real plants placed on photosensitive paper in the sun for twenty-four hours, resulting in ethereal imprints showing the outlines of the plants. Since no fixative was used, the works continue to transform through time, becoming lighter and less clear, like fading memories.

During an artist residency in Berlin, Paula collected embroidered, used textiles — tablecloths, bedclothes and towels — at flea markets. She draws family portraits on the fabric using pigments and paints, emphasising the symbolic value of these domestic textiles. The tablecloth object 'Magda and the children' shows Magda Goebbels and her children — deconstructing the fascist-hegemonic family image and creating possible alternate identities.

This exhibition brings together selected paintings, photos, and archive material from the last few years of work of Argentinean-Israeli artist Paula Elion. The departing point for her first solo exhibition in Stockholm becomes notions of judgment and bias — frequent companions of someone who moves from place to place. Telling the story of her family in parallel with the controversial history of dissemination and establishment of the Prickly Pear plant (Opuntia ficus-indica) in the 20th century, Elion reveals the roots and layers of both personal and collective traumas through the prism of politicized territories, mixed identities, human destinies, victories, and defeats over natural resources. The exhibition is supported by the Argentinean Embassy.

Coming from different generations and geographies, Maja Stjärna and Paula Elion are connected through their shared interest in home textiles and their ties to family and heritage. Their work explores socially assigned roles — especially those imposed on women — and what happens when they are resisted, through themes of motherhood, beauty, bodily change, and aging. They work with inherited and used textiles — tablecloths, sheets, kitchen towels — materials shaped by expectations of women's labor. Stains, holes, and traces of use mirror the marks of time on the body, each piece carrying memory and layered meaning where past and present meet. Part of Stockholm Craft Week. Supported by Riksförbundet Sveriges Konstföreningar and Kulturrådet.

In my art, the process involved in the creation of a piece is as important as the result — maybe even more. This show is not a show in the usual sense — I will also provide a glimpse into my creative process, working on installations while using the Centrifuge room at Konsthall C as source of inspiration. The long tall windows and high ceilings provide the base for this new environment created with tinfoil paper, baking paper and more. The visitor will be able to witness the progress in situ, in real time.

Small figures made of readymade items, repurposed with a playful approach and experimental use of material. The dolls often appear in pairs or small groups — they dive in, lean on and stumble over each other in attempts to find balance. By deconstructing and reconstructing objects from their cultural structures into new artistic forms, we are invited to explore alternative interpretations of meaning.

Intentionally juxtaposing two vividly distinct German narratives — contrasting the tragic figure of Magda Goebbels, who embodied the perfect Aryan beauty, loyalty, and motherhood during Nazi dictatorship, with a group of refugees in Kassel today and their new life in a democratic Germany. From darkness and horror to a more promising present and future, two very different realities from very different periods of time collide.