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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff: Alternative Secrecy

Oct 23, 2021 – Feb 2, 2022
Exercisplan 4, 111 49 Stockholm, Sweden

Growing up in Sweden in the 1970s, Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff was captivated by Nordisk kriminalkrönika, a magazine that summarized criminal cases around Scandinavia. The themes that drew her—the vulnerability of women and the violence against them—later resurfaced in her art. Von Hausswolff’s first medium was music: in the late 1980s she sang in the punk band Cortex. In the 1990s, it was art: photography, sculpture, textiles, and installations. Von Hausswolff hangs her work, which often features faceless women in stages of undress, quite low on the wall, “in order to make you approach the pictures with your stomach,” she says, “rather than with your eyes.” At Moderna Museet, nearly 100 artworks she’s made since the beginning of her career are displayed alongside 50 she selected from the museum’s permanent collection. —Jensen Davis

Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff, “Alone with Bubble,” 1996/2021 © Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff.