Skip to main content

The Art of Ann-Sofi Sidén at House of Sweden

Photo by Ann-Sofi Sidén
Ann-Sofi Sidén
Ann-Sofi Sidén

House of Sweden is hosting Ann-Sofi Sidén, one of Sweden’s most internationally renowned contemporary artists. She puts herself in the center of her projects, often with provoking statements about society and the human condition. Join us as we inaugurate a selection of her works followed by a personal artist talk.

Opening reception is October 25, 2019 from 6:30 - 8:30 pm including a Meet the Artist discussion, moderated by art critic Gregory Volk.

The works presented in House of Sweden include three ways of looking at the female body. They independently carve out their own narrative space and yet converge by depicting an experience either happening in the periphery or in the hidden. The works challenge preconceived ideas of what a woman is or should be.

  • After the Fact, 2007, 20 color photogravures of a young mother who, for reasons unknown, commits the desperate act of placing her newborn baby in a baby hatch at a German hospital. The brutal, and yet caring act changes her and the baby’s destiny forever.
  • Fideicommissum, 2000, Bronze, (On loan from the American University Museum, Washington, DC, Gift of Tony Podesta (2019.1.2). Fideicommissum is a contemplative self-portrait of Ann-Sofi Sidén squatting down to urinate, ‘’marking her territory as animals do, and by extension it infiltrates a culturewide, or worldwide, situation in which men in general occupy hugely skewed proportions of public space’’ (quote by Gregory Volk).
  • Prozím! Tschechische Blumen, 2001, 8 min 54 sec. video. Ann-Sofi Sidén revisits a previous interviewee, Eva, with a counter-image to her life as a prostitute. The artist captures a carefree moment in Eva’s life when she is picking flowers on a hillside lake. Prozím! Tschechische Blumen is a portrait and celebration of Eva’s survival.

The exhibition will be on display in House of Sweden Oct 25 – Dec 15, 2019.

*/

The opening event is organized in partnership with American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center and IA&A at Hillyer.