Klara Kristalova at the Venice Biennale: between desperation and dark comedy Text by Natalia Muntean Twelve metres of tree trunk, covered in hand-dyed Swedish carpets, lying on the floor of Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion like a giant. On and around it, eleven ceramic figures: a fat mouse, an apple child, a warrior woman breaking free of leaves. For Swedish artist Klara Kristalova, the invitation to represent the Nordic Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale was so unexpected that it stopped her working for months. Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, the body of work is the most ambitious work of Kristalova’s career, hovering somewhere between desperation and dark comedy. Natalia Muntean: Congratulations on this achievement! Klara Kristalova: Thank you! I was chosen by Finland, the country in charge of the Nordic Pavilion this year, and it was a big surprise. This was the last thing I expected. For me, it’s huge. NM: Why was it the last thing you expected?KK: I’m not the type of artist they would typically invite nowadays. I wouldn’t say I’m old-fashioned, but I work with sculpture, and my work isn’t conceptual in a developed sense. I have ideas around it, but it’s not a built concept. I think that kind of work is what gets invited more these days. So it came as a shock, and I couldn’t work for several months. I was completely stuck, thinking: This is too big for me. NM: How do you feel the three works sit together: yours, Benjamin Orlow’s and Tori Wrånes’s?KK: I think our three works function really well together. In certain details and ways of thinking, they overlap, but at the same time, they are completely different. The Nordic Pavilion looks monumental and sculptural but also very much like a fairy tale. Tori works with mythology and figures, Benjamin as well, but in a totally different way. There’s a loose shared language, but each of us uses it differently. NM: I read that you used to go to the Venice Biennale with your father. How does it feel to now be representing the Nordic countries here?KK: It’s completely surreal. From a very young age, coming here with my father was an enormous thing – to see the art that mattered in the world. I’ve continued coming as an adult, many times. You just work on your work and don’t expect to be included in something like this, because for me, it has always felt almost mythical. For me, it’s very dreamy to be here. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen NM: Was this a dream come true?KK: I never dared to dream it, it was too abstract that I would ever be invited. So it’s not a dream come true exactly. But when I got the call, I thought: Well, I can retire now. Of course I won’t. I don’t think an artist really retires. You just continue, maybe in a different way. If I take even a week off, I feel completely lost. The work is a way of straightening things out, not consciously; I don’t write plans or intentions, but it helps clarify the mind. NM: Do you have any rituals when you work?KK: Not really. I wake up, walk my dogs, and start. I prefer to have several things going at the same time in one day, several sculptures in progress, which also suits the material, because with clay, you can’t work too long before it needs to dry. So I do a little here, a little there, then maybe some drawings or planning for something else. I like the variety. NM: Do your sculptures talk to you while you’re making them?KK: Yes. They change a lot while I’m working. I always start with sketches – a plan, a sense of what I want. When I’m preparing for a specific place, I think about the space and let my mind make associations, then I weave that together with where I am in my life. But once I start building, it shifts, because the work develops its own voice. It’s in the material, but it also changes in my mind as my hands work. I can’t think everything out in advance and then just execute it. The hand does something to the thinking. It’s a give-and-take. Installation view: How Many Angels Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin?, Nordic Countries Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen NM: What did the ones for the Biennale say?KK: They all dwell on this woman lying down, the whole world on her, and also the mother, and you don’t know if she’s fading or coming back. There’s a flat, see-through relief made of wood that’s almost like smoke, a spirit emanating from her. There’s a very fat mouse that weighs her down; he’s the male character, a dominant, guardian figure, but you don’t know if he’s a friend or a threat. He comes from a cuddly toy I had as a child. Then there’s an apple figure – taken from an older work where my mother was a deer, my father a tree, and I was the apple child. Here, only the apple child remains. It’s curious and mischievous, and partly it’s there for compositional reasons; the work is mainly brown and black, and the deep red apple is a colour note. Then there’s a large bronze warrior woman, trapped in leaves but breaking free. She has real power. I specifically wanted something raw and angry in this, not a group of cute figures. NM: Can you describe the body of work you’re showing?KK: The main piece is a very large tree trunk, twelve metres long, that is also a woman. She has a face, hair, and stands on branches like an animal on many legs, with a root at the other end. The whole structure is covered in Swedish woven
