Author name: Natalia Muntean

Martin Wickström on Painting, Space and OSLO Written by Natalia Muntean Martin Wickström describes his way of working as one where you “start somewhere, and it kind of develops during.” Presented at CFHILL Gallery in Stockholm, OSLO brings together painting, literature and photographic material in an exhibition informed by Henrik Ibsen, Edvard Munch, as well as the artist’s long-standing interest in found objects. Active since the late 1970s, the Swedish painter reflects on his process, where images are sometimes held for decades before finding their place. In OSLO, references are absorbed rather than illustrated, and meaning emerges through trust in the room, the material and the passage of time. Muntean Natalia: Why Oslo? What drew you to this title, and what kind of space does it open for the work?Martin Wickström: It’s normally when I do a show, I have a room space, obviously, and a deadline. But when I start working, I don’t know anything about the title or anything. I start somewhere, and it kind of develops during, so it’s kind of scary. Will it end well? I don’t know. But in this case, the theme is easier to read than it used to be. When I started, I had this painting with a big truck house. I collect a lot of pictures and images from several sources. The sofa – that one I also had for many years, kind of lying around. But this time, I started without knowing anything about Oslo, with a sofa. The next step was my wife, Lena – that’s important. She had talked about a play she made for television in 1993, Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. I decided to see that, and meanwhile, I started thinking about theatre plays and texts. And all of a sudden, I knew that this truck was a “Dukkehjem” (A Doll’s House), the very famous play, also by Ibsen. And then we managed to get Hedda Gabler from the archives on SVT to see it. I was totally astonished.  I also found a photo book by Edvard Munch. He worked a lot with photography, not in a documentary way, but experimental, introspective. One of the paintings here is based on one of his photographs. It shows Rosa, one of his models with red hair, and her sister Olga. At first, I thought it was Munch himself in the photo, but then I read about it and realised it was the two sisters. And then I knew that this was it. It was going to be Norway in one way or another. That’s how OSLO came to be.NM: You mentioned strong women like Hedda Gabler and Nora from A Doll’s House. Were you also thinking of the current political situation?MW: No, it wasn’t that, but it’s even more important to reflect on it. These plays were written in the 1860s-80s and were extremely progressive stories about strong women. Nora, in the end, decides to just leave her husband and kids to start a new life; in its time, that was extremely radical and provocative. Then there is Hedda Gabler, a strong daughter of a military colonel. She inherited duel pistols from her father, and she is almost exploding in her marriage. In the end, she kills herself. These were written 150 years ago, and all of a sudden, women’s history is going down again fast. It’s frightening, and it makes it even more important to take these strong women out. NM: What can you tell me about the use of the colour red in this exhibition?MW: I’ve used it sometimes, but not like this. I started with this small painting of a woman with a telephone, which is cut out from a film still of Jane Fonda. That image was red from the beginning. When I finished that painting, which was the first one I did, I thought, “Wow, I really like the red,” and it also corresponded with the strong theme in the exhibition. Initially, the photos are in black and white, so I turned them into red. Photo: Courtesy of the artist & CFHILL NM: It sounds like you have some intentions when you start working, but there’s also a lot of play involved. Could you walk me through your creative process a little bit, and what a typical day might look like?MW: I mean, I obviously have a lot of things collected, but I don’t really know how they fit together at first. People ask me, “How do you dare to work like that?” I’ve done it now maybe 60 times over 50 years. You start with what’s important: the space. So I start with the space. I work on the computer: I virtually ‘take down’ the walls of every space I work with and then build it up again. I turn images red, change them, cut them, whatever is needed, and then I place them as miniatures, in the right scale, on the virtual walls to test how they might work together. Of course, as you understand, I don’t have all the works ready at that point, but I can still start by saying, “Okay, I need this, and that, and that. Maybe that’s a bit too much,” and so on. I can begin to see what I need and how it might fit. For example, I knew about the truck house painting, and that was the first one. Then I thought, if I put that one there, and the sofa painting over here, which has nothing to do with Oslo, but I named it after George Harrison’s ‘Norwegian Wood’, the Beatles classic, then it starts to connect. Even if the final exhibition doesn’t end up exactly like the computer model, I’ve learned how to read the room. That’s my process. And when it comes to separate paintings, I also work with them digitally: I change the colours, cut things away, and then make a big photocopy. I look at the photo I made on the computer and work from that. NM: How

In Conversation with Diana Orving: Celestial Bodies at Millesgården Museum Written by Natalia Muntean Photo by Märta Thisner What happens when the sculptures of Carl Milles encounter the fluid, porous textiles of Diana Orving? To launch the &Milles exhibition series at Millesgården Museum in Stockholm, the inaugural presentation features Stockholm-based artist Diana Orving, whose exhibition Celestial Bodies introduces textile sculptures into the world of Milles’s mythology and astronomy. Working with silk, linen and repetitive stitching, Orving creates “organic beings” that seem to defy gravity. In this exhibition, she reflects on the spirit of the site, the vulnerability of her materials and her belief that the human body is our first universe. Natalia Muntean: The &Milles series is framed as a dialogue across time. In your site-specific response, were you in conversation more with Carl Milles’s artworks, his themes of mythology and astronomy, or the spirit of the place he and Olga created?Diana Orving: For me, the strongest dialogue was with the spirit of the place itself – the atmosphere Carl and Olga Milles shaped through a life lived alongside art, nature, belief, and curiosity. Rather than responding directly to individual sculptures, I was drawn to what exists between them: the air, the height, the light, and the sense of upward longing embedded in the former studio. Early on, I understood that my work needed to inhabit the upper zones, ceilings, thresholds, and in-between spaces, responding to the building’s own vertical rhythm. Knowing that Milles observed the stars from a small tower room made something click. It felt like entering a place already oriented toward the sky. The works grew out of that shared sense of wonder, rather than from a desire to echo Milles’s formal language.  NM: Why did you choose the title Celestial Bodies for this exhibition?DO: The title carries a dual meaning that felt central to the exhibition. Celestial bodies refers both to planets and stars, and to bodies as vessels – human, animal or imagined. Throughout the exhibition, bodies appear in states of becoming: drifting, hovering, suspended, or transforming. Everything alive is in motion, slow but persistent, and I try to capture that sense of movement in my sculptures, as if they are not truly still, only momentarily paused. The title holds a tension between intimacy and immensity – between being grounded in the body and reaching toward something unknowable.  NM: There’s a contrast between your soft forms and Milles’ solid bronze and stone. Is this a conversation about contrasting worldviews, or did you find an unexpected softness in his work, or a hidden strength in yours?DO: I experience it less as a contrast and more as a dialogue between different kinds of permanence. Milles’s materials speak of endurance, gravity, and monumentality, while my textiles speak of breath, vulnerability and change, yet they carry their own strength. There is a quiet tenderness in Milles’ figures, particularly in their upward reach or moments of suspended movement. In my work, strength lies in time: in the accumulated labour of stitching, folding and installing. The dialogue unfolds somewhere between weight and weightlessness. NM: You explore origin, memory and the subconscious. When creating for this specific site, did you feel you were weaving your own memories, responding to the memories held in the Milles home or tapping into a more collective or mythological memory?DO: It was a layering of all three. My hands carry embodied memory – gestures and repetitions built up over decades of working with textiles. At Millesgården, I was also surrounded by another life’s devotion to making, belief, and imagination. Beyond that, the site holds something archetypal. For me, mythology functions as a form of collective memory, a way of holding experiences that resist rational explanation. The works move within that shared subconscious space, where personal experience meets something older and more universal. Photo by Erik Lefvander NM: You work a lot with themes of the body and memory. How do those ideas connect to the cosmic themes in this show?DO: I think of the body as our first universe. It’s where we first encounter gravity, rhythm, expansion and balance. When I work with cosmic themes, I’m not thinking of space as distant, but as something reflected within us. Memory functions like a constellation – fragmented, non-linear and constantly shifting. The sculptures carry that sense of internal movement, suggesting that both bodies and memories are always in motion. NM: What is your favourite material to work with and why?DO: Textile, without question. It carries time in a very direct way. Every stitch records a decision, a hesitation, a breath. I try to give the material a body, a presence and an internal movement, as if guiding it to speak in its own language. Its lightness allows me to work at a monumental scale without losing intimacy. Textiles can hold vulnerability and strength at once, which feels essential to my practice. NM: As the first artist in the &Milles series, you are setting a tone. What do you believe is the role of a contemporary artist when entering into dialogue with a historic legacy and collection like this one?DO: I believe the role is to listen before responding, not to illustrate the past or position oneself against it, but to allow a conversation to unfold. A historic collection isn’t static; it continues to breathe through new encounters. Contemporary artists can activate these spaces by introducing uncertainty, tenderness, and alternative ways of knowing, adding a new layer rather than overwriting what already exists. Photo by Erik Lefvander NM: What do you hope people feel or think about when they walk between your textiles and Carl Milles’s bronze sculptures?DO: I hope the exhibition opens a quiet, generous space for reflection – on fragility and endurance, longing and belief, and on life as something constantly unfolding.

Tillsammans – Group Exhibition at JUS Written by Natalia Muntean “This exhibition is about celebrating all those years we’ve known each other and collaborated in various forms.” Ann-Sofie Back’s words set the tone for Tillsammans, a group exhibition at JUS that functions as a gathering of “different kinds of eras.” Bringing together Ann-Sofie Back, Diana Orving, Horisaki, Lotta Jansson, Lovisa Burfitt, Martin Bergström, and Yasar Aydin, the exhibition features seven practitioners whose work moves fluidly between fashion, art, jewellery, and objects. Hidden away on a back street in central Stockholm, JUS has for more than thirty years functioned as both destination and platform—a space where fashion, jewellery, objects, scent, and art coexist. Rather than presenting fashion as a fixed system, JUS has long embraced a layered, intuitive approach. For many of the artists, the space is inseparable from their own histories. Photo by Henrik Halvarsson Material sensitivity and process run throughout the exhibition. Yasar Aydin presents one-of-a-kind silver jewellery, “a twist on something recognisable as me,” while Martin Bergström shows woven works rooted in calmness, nature, and long-standing material exploration.  For Aydin, JUS has been foundational. “Without JUS, I wouldn’t be where I am,” he says, describing how his practice shifted from art jewellery toward a more material-driven, handcrafted approach through years of showing and selling his work at the store. “JUS has been number one for me to develop and be successful in that sense.” Showing work alongside other makers is, for him, about exchange: “To interact with each other, to talk about materials and techniques.” For Ann-Sofie Back, the exhibition became a marker of a relationship that began in the late 1990s when Ulrika Nilsson bought her graduate collection. “This exhibition is about celebrating all those years we’ve known each other and collaborated in various forms,” she explains. Her contribution to Tillsammans, a sculptural Christmas installation made from repurposed wigs, reflects her shift from fashion to interior objects. Currently focusing on objects rather than garments, Back describes her new work as “super decadent” and “vain.” She describes the process as spontaneous and playful, shaped by what materials could be found rather than by a fixed plan: “Now that I don’t have to work with the body, it’s freer. I can objectify the object instead.” Photo by Henrik Halvarsson Photo by Henrik Halvarsson For Martin Bergström, the exhibition is a celebration of a relationship with JUS that has “grown together for years,” beginning in the 1990s. He likens the exhibition to a “shared garden” where “everyone grows in their own way, yet we share the same soil.” Working freely across fashion, art, and interiors, Bergström presents Reflections of My Shoes, a series of jacquard weaves born from a specific moment of connection. “I was on the phone with Ulrika Nilsson, sitting on a jetty at Pålsundet in Stockholm. When I looked down, the water reflected my shoes. I translated that reflection into jacquard weaves.” Bergström views JUS as a “collective lab” and a home that “holds the fragile patterns within us.” His history with the space is marked by moments of deep inspiration, from the time he showed his “poisonous plants” to discovering the writer Vivi Täckholm at the store, who became one of his greatest sources of inspiration. To him, the space remains a “calm and kind place” that addresses the “quite quiet” atmosphere of an institution that has remained “solid for so long.” For less established voices, the exhibition carries a sense of trust. Lotta Jansson speaks of being encouraged rather than judged: “Ulrika just said: ‘Don’t worry, people are kind.’” That atmosphere, supportive, confident, and unselfish, was repeatedly described as central to the JUS experience.  Jansson highlights the unique confidence Ulrika projects: “She’s become very confident in her way of thinking and choosing… that’s also how she shares her confidence with you.” Regarding the theme of the exhibition, Jansson suggests that the “togetherness” might be more about the curator’s perspective than the artists’ own connections: “I think we all individually represent togetherness for her, more than us together.” For Horisaki, whose crushed and reshaped hats form one of the exhibition’s most tactile installations, Tillsammans marks a return to an aesthetic first shown at JUS more than a decade ago. “We’ve always done crushed hats,” they explain. “It’s about making hats that are not fragile. You can sit on them, pack them, reshape them, and they’ll still look great.” The hats are described as carrying “the memories of life, time and randomness” in their structure, objects shaped by use rather than preservation. That philosophy extends beyond the objects themselves. “We don’t believe in competition or sharp elbows,” Horisaki says. “Everything is better when you collaborate and work together.” In this sense, the title Tillsammans is not symbolic but practical, describing a way of working grounded in openness and shared experience. “The installation reflects what we have sought since our very first hats: the beauty of patina, of hats that are crumpled, worn, and cherished… We aim to highlight the hats’ functionality, how they can be worn and reshaped in countless ways, always changing yet remaining true to their character. This last part also applies to how we perceive JUS.” Beyond retail, JUS has long positioned itself as a space for education and exchange, hosting exhibitions, talks, workshops, and art history courses throughout the year. Tillsammans embodies this role not through a single curatorial statement, but through presence: works shown side by side, conversations unfolding quietly, and histories intersecting.  More than a group exhibition, Tillsammans became a reflection on continuity – on what it means to build something over time, and how creative practices, like places, can remain open, generous, and alive by growing together. Photo by Henrik Halvarsson

Amine Habke: The Garden of Intimacy, Repairing Masculinity Written by Natalia Muntean In the delicate, deliberate stitches of Amine Habki’s textile works, a new language of masculinity is being woven. For his first solo exhibition in the Nordic region, I Will Sew Up All the Petals of Your Garden, the French-Moroccan artist transforms the Andréhn-Schiptjenko Gallery in Stockholm into a meditative interior where softness is strength and vulnerability becomes a form of resilience. Drawing on the visual heritage of Islamic ornamentation, European Romanticism, and the diasporic experience, Habki’s practice, spanning embroidery, painting, and sculpture, cultivates a space where the body and the botanical merge. “I don’t have any memories where I wasn’t an artist,” he reflects, “I felt obligated to be an artist and to live by my art.”  Natalia Muntean: Can you elaborate a little bit about the meaning behind the title of the exhibition?Amine Habke: The title, I think, represents the energy and the entire mission of the show. The idea of a garden, for me, represents the area of intimacy, an inner world. But at the same time, the garden is famous in the iconography of romantic paintings. For this show, I was really inspired by The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch. The idea of the show is also to talk about the idea of rehabilitation. I am trying to repair an image of what masculinity is. NM: Why is it important for you to challenge these ideas about masculinity through art?AH: This is not about changing something for the world; it’s just for me. It’s a quest for me to take care of this image, of this body. I like the idea of doing a new vision, a new iconography, just for my own healing, just to feel kinder, more connected to what I want to look like. This is a little poetic way to talk about this, and it really helps me, and I think this also helps other people. NM: What are you looking for in this connection to your work?AH: I’m looking for more liberty to represent masculinity, to represent romance, to represent love, vulnerability and fragility. NM: Your practice spans embroidery, painting, and sculpture. How did you begin?AH: I started with a lot of drawing, but I wasn’t really fulfilled because I was trying to find a volume and to have more relief. So, embroidery was a way to give more shapes and three-dimensionality to my drawings. Embroidery also comes as a visual heritage. My family has a lot of tapestries. I feel connected to these objects. The houses of my grandma and my aunties were places of something soft, domestic, warm, and resilient. I was trying to incorporate this aesthetic onto bodies that are generally represented outside, in heavy material, in big forms. The media often destroys the non-white body, centralising some communities and cultures while excluding others. For me, this is a way to make an opposition to Orientalism. Orientalism destroyed our culture and our heritage. When you’re born in the third generation of Moroccan diaspora, you have certain expectations, but then you discover the reality is more complex. I think exploring these objects and the story of civilisations helps. NM: The slow process of embroidery – does it influence the narrative of your work?AH: In my studio, I have a lot of drawings on the wall, and I also write a lot of poems. Sometimes poems give me images, and some images give me poems, so it’s a mutual dialogue. I start by selecting one of the drawings, and I go to the shop for textiles and fabrics. The element of chance comes in because sometimes I can be obsessed with one fabric, and I think, “Okay, it could match with this drawing, with these colours”. Then I create the image. But there’s a lot of improvisation and freestyle. I have the idea and the concept, but I never strictly know what colours I will use, or if I will add extra things. NM: You incorporate found objects into your textile works. What is their role?AH: I think they can symbolise an idea. For example, one piece in the Stockholm show features a lace fabric with flowers already on it. I add painting and embroidery to put a spotlight on, and to make a combination with what I want to symbolise. Found objects are also a way to make more funny combinations. I think this is more the fun and spontaneous aspect of my practice. NM: You get inspired by the ornaments in Islamic art, transforming arabesques into living patterns. How does your French-Moroccan heritage inform your visual style?AH: I’m really inspired by the ornamentation, like the grotesque. I discovered that this is not a well-known or celebrated form because, for many people, grotesque is just like minor art; it’s not a major form. I like this idea of putting a spotlight on a minor form. For me, ornamentation is the beginning of surrealism. You have a lot of different motifs and patterns, and sometimes it can look like something real. The grotesque embodies that by mixing humans with animals, with flowers. You also see this phenomenon in some Islamic cultures, for example, the zellige tiles, where the symmetry and repetition make human or body shapes appear. This is the ornamental aspect that inspired me. I’m also really inspired by my French background, like the Surrealism of Magritte. I like Romantic artists like Friedrich. At the same time, I also like Persian miniatures. It’s a mix of the Mediterranean area. ‘Still Dirty’ ‘Body Guard’ NM: The flower is a recurring symbol. Beyond beauty, what does the flower represent for you?AH: Flowers have different meanings. I tried to show that it can also be a trap. I did some pieces with men holding flowers; it can be a really soft object, but also really dangerous at the same time. Flowers are present in mythology, like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and also in the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish. I like the idea of the flower as