Nordic Portraits
Nordic Portraits is a series of one-on-one conversations with Scandinavian artists, exploring topics ranging from how they approach their craft through to their personal experiences with success, failure, collaborations, triumphs, setbacks and everything in between. Discover nordic culture through the eyes of its leading artists. Music by Nina Liv. Visuals by Frame CPH.
Nordic Portraits
Mamma Andersson
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Karin ‘Mamma’ Andersson or simply Mamma Andersson as she’s more commonly known, is one of Sweden's most internationally-recognised visual artists. With a career spanning over thirty years, Mamma is renowned for her technical prowess and nuanced exploration of such themes as memory, femininity and folklore - often depicted in melancholic landscapes and domestic interiors. She represented the Nordic Pavilion for the 50th Venice Biennale and her paintings are included in the permanent collections of such prestigious institutions as MoMA, New York and Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Explore more of Mamma's work here
I cannot think I'm successful when I'm in my studio because it's uh just going to destroy everything for me. I have to think I'm Karin and I'm from Lulu and I want to tell a story that's important for me.
NPThat was Mama Andersson, and this is Nordic Portraits. With a career spanning over 30 years, Karen is today renowned for her technical prowess and nuanced exploration of such themes as memory, femininity, and folklore, often depicted in melancholic landscapes and domestic interiors. She represented the Nordic Pavilion for the 50th Venice Biennale, and her paintings are included in the permanent collections of institutions such as MoMA, New York and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Carden, welcome to Nordic Portraits. Oh, thank you. Carn, I wondered if we could go back to the early 1980s.
SpeakerOh wow. It's a long time ago.
NPYes. Where as a fresh-faced 21-year-old, you'd just arrived in Stockholm to commence your studies in art. And having moved to the capital from your hometown of Lulio in the far north, I just wondered what was it that you remember most about that time?
SpeakerI think I was super curious. And I I think I was really happy also that I had finally decided to try to be an artist. Because I had a sort of I was questioned by my parents. They didn't like that I should be an artist. They were ordinary working people. So they wanted me to have a more safe job, like a teacher in drawing and art or something like that. But um I had a very strong feeling of freedom to come to art school and meet people who had the same sort of sense of the life and the future.
unknownYeah.
NPHow was that for you growing up in Lulio, which is essentially on the edge of the polar circle? Yeah. Did it feel like you were isolated? I'm just curious what life was like.
SpeakerNo, not at all. You know, Lulio is not so small. I mean, if you compare with towns in China and other places, it's super small, but it's around 80,000 people. And uh it's an industry town with a steel factory and harbour, and it was a quite good culture life there. And I was very young, I was in film clubs and I was very interested in culture, not reading though, but everything else. So no, I think I was very happy as a kid and teenager, and I had very lovely parents, old parents though, but and lots of friends, and I have always been very social. So I think it was very good growing up there. My parents was also like nature people, so it was very much in the nature the whole year round and skiing and picking berries and different things, and and they were also very much into handcraft, both of them. So every free time they had, they was working with different things. And finally, a few years ago, I understood their place that they worked was a sort of studio. But I I hadn't thought about that before, but of course it was. It was a sort of studio.
NPAnd you mentioned that you were interested in film as a teenager. You said in the past that reading and writing didn't come easily to you at school.
SpeakerNo, it took a long time. Now I'm a reader.
NPDid that then give you a stronger sense of visual language growing up, do you think?
SpeakerAbsolutely, I think so. And uh I think the premium thing with movies was uh a way for me to travel in the history and in the world. I mean, it was the only way I could travel. I hadn't been abroad and my parents had no other language than Swedish, and they were very common, working class. So for me it was a sort of traveling in the fantasy and the real world too. So of course I really liked to watch movies and I still do that. I mean, it's a really good media.
NPYou said at one point that you thought you might become a filmmaker.
SpeakerYeah, yeah, yeah. It was a dream for a long, long time. A long time after I have finished my art studies too, but it was more like a secret. But um I think I make sort of films with my paintings.
NPAnd you were very occupied by drawing as a child.
SpeakerYeah, I it was my I would say I think for many children to draw and paint is a sort of language. For me, it was absolutely like that. I mean, all my fantasies came from my hand to a pencil or colours, and uh it was also a sort of meditation, I think. I was by myself sitting there and talking loud and make stories, and it was not to have a result or a nice picture, it was uninteresting. More like I was telling stories by myself.
NPSo you arrive in Stockholm and your education was quite long. You you studied for eight years?
SpeakerYeah, I had a little bit crazy way on my art studies because when I came to Stockholm, I started with sculpture in a university for handcraft and sculpture, and I understood quite earlier I'm never going to be a sculptor. I mean, I don't think in that way. You have to plan your work when you're working with three-dimensional things, and I more go after a sort of feeling. And I'm very impulsive, I think. So I long to go in a real painting school. So from the university I was seeking to another preparing school. So when I came there, people didn't understand I came from an university. But it doesn't matter. Sometimes it's good to not know everything because it was two really important years for me that painting school. And I learned a lot of ground things. So I was five years at the art academy and I had four years before that. So nine years. It's like a doctor or something.
NPSo when you step out from that, let's say, bubble or environment, yeah. What was that like for you to then suddenly be standing on your own two feet as an artist? Did you feel equipped to start a career at that stage?
SpeakerYeah, you know, I got my two sons at the art academy time. So the study time was 11 years because I was free from the school, one year each, boy. And uh I think I was quite finished with the art school when I graduated. And of course it was difficult for me the first year because nobody knocked on my door and wanted to come in and talk about what I have done, as it had been for a long, long time with the professors and study friends. So, of course, I had a feeling that everything was up to me. But uh I also liked it in many ways.
NPAnd in terms of developing your own practice, you have mentioned in the past that you very much like to use found image as inspiration. Yeah. Is that something that you employed from the very outset?
SpeakerYeah. You know, I have a sort of picture library, and I have collected pictures since I was a kid. That's true. So some of the pictures are from I was seven, eight, and it have been very important for me. But I think I used pictures like inspiration and sort of part of the whole process in another way before, and it has changed with time. I mean I still have a sort of start picture when I start to paint, but I leave them quite early, and I can use just a few details from a picture, for example. But I'm also looking at a lot of other artists. So I'm always have a lot of inspiration and materials around me. I need that. It's a part of the whole process.
NPWhat is it about a picture that you select that so captures your eye? Is it just completely different from one image to another, or is there a common theme of what you're interested in?
SpeakerYeah, for me, I think they are together and they have a same sort of psychology or aesthetic or something. But but of course they're coming from very, very different areas. I mean, I can find a book about pony riding, and I find something very interesting in that. Another thing coming from a book about medication for older people or interiors or whatever, very different areas. But I'm not seeking so much new pictures anymore. Before it was like I was addicted to find nice pictures, but today I don't I'm not seeking them so much. Of course, if I see something and like it, I can buy it, but I'm not obsessed with it anymore.
NPAnd how literal is your depiction of these images if we were to compare with the painted work that was inspired by it?
SpeakerYeah. I think I do a little bit like um picture mainus sometimes before I start a longer process, and I can collect a group of pictures and put them together and then I take off one after one. But it has been different. I don't think I'm there so much anymore. I had a sort of picture synopsis. But it's other things that can start me up today. It can be a song, it can be a film or yeah, other things. But right now I have been in a sort of pause for a very long time, the longest I have. Because from April I checked out from my studio. The first reason was because I bought a house, a summer house for myself and had a reason to leave everything for a moment. But I still haven't started working because I think it was necessary for me to take this pause. But it's also very scary because when you have been off from your work for a long time, it's difficult to find an entrance back because you are empty, you are blank, you don't know where you should start. And every time you start when you have a longer pause, you are weak and you don't have so much self-confidence, and you're going back somewhere you have been for a long, long time ago. And it's embarrassing, and it's also very fragile. You don't want people in your studio. I don't talk about what I do, and and slowly, slowly I'm coming back more and more, and one day you are back. But it also means that you have to work every day for months. So of course I'm scared about it, but I I I'm also longing to come back to the process, of course.
NPWhat will be your starting point when you re-enter the working space? What will be the very first thing you do?
SpeakerI don't know. I really don't know. Yeah. But I'm planning to go to Paris for printing in the end of this fall, and maybe that can also put me into the process. Sometimes it's good to do something else. Start with another material or do something else, surprise yourself. It can be good. Meet new people. I haven't printed in Paris before. Yeah.
NPSo it interests me because you've said in the past that there's this cycle of an artist, one of the milestones being when you hand over a new show to a gallerist, it's like handing over your weapons. Yeah. And I'm fascinated by the fact that in spite of having gone through that process so many times as a seasoned and successful artist like yourself, that you can still feel that sense of insecurity.
SpeakerThe insecurity is the most important, I think. Because if you want to surprise yourself and take a step in another new direction, you need to be insecure. Because if you are secure in what you're doing, you just repeat things you have done before. I mean, it's not so nice to know exactly what an artist is going to show for next exhibition, the exact same style. I don't just want to surprise the audience. The most important thing is to surprise yourself to find it fun to do it. So I think it's a sort of requirement for the whole process that you don't know what you should do and to not be safe. The best things I have done I have done like a coincidence.
NPSo on a practical level, does that mean constantly evolving your own technique and the materials you're using?
SpeakerYeah, I think the material and the handcraft, I mean I think for the most of the painters, the material is really interesting. How you mix different materials and brushes and uh techniques. The techniques is the trigger point, I think. And uh the few artists I have a constant talk with. We always talk about materials and we're sending materials to each other too, and recommend that this brand is super good, they have really good burned umbra, for example, or and um yeah, it's a big part. And it was about. The other thing is also very important. I think it's on the same level. But if you're not interested about the technique and the material, I'm not interested. All the artists and all the art pieces I have been inspired by have a special hook on the technique way. It don't mean that it's very skilled or very perfect, absolutely not. It can be the opposite.
NPThat leads me to the subject of knowing one's art history. Yeah. I know you've said in the past that this is a critical element. Does that feed into your understanding of what's possible in terms of technique and materiality?
SpeakerYeah, I think the art history for me it's super important and have been very important already from the beginning. I would say it was the art history waving me into that world. I remember when I saw Van Gogh and I was like 14-15, and my sister she she bought a poster for me and I had it in my room, and I find it like the most beautiful. And then when I started in art school I was so embarrassed, I couldn't talk about Van Gogh, it was like talking about Abba or something. It was too simple. But today, when I'm older and wiser, I can say I love him so much as I did when I was 14. And uh the dead artists have also been the best teachers for me, of course. I mean, no living artist can tell me lots of special technical things like the dead artist.
NPWhat do you think it was about Van Gogh that so captured you as a young person?
SpeakerI don't know. I didn't know anything about his history in that time. But I think it was uh the colours and it's very decorative, and uh it was one of the night paintings I had. I don't remember if it was the town with a stern knight or if it was a landscape. I don't remember. But of course it was the decorative thing. And um yeah, many of the I mean Henri Matisse, for example, have also been very important for me. Yeah, of course it's basic, but whatever. You cannot go around him.
NPYeah. So when you find yourself rolling up your sleeves and really digging into these new areas where you explore different techniques, I'm guessing it's not necessarily a fast process. Do you find yourself often spending a really long time on something very specific in order to see what's possible?
SpeakerYes, of course. You have to be very critical to yourself when you work, of course. And I am very much. So I have no problem to cover or destroy things I don't like. I mean, I'm working to the point that uh I can understand now I cannot see any fault, it's fine. And then I stop because I have got this question so many times from journalists and say, How do you know when a painting is finished? I always say, you know when a painting is finished when you are not upset about it. Yeah, a little bit like that. Yeah, you like it and you you are a little bit proud too, yeah. Then it's fine. But then you can look back in anger. I mean, after a year or two or two months or something, you think, why did I left this painting? It's so bad. So I mean it can also happen.
NPYeah. How important is it then for an artist like yourself to have deadlines?
SpeakerUh yeah, it's quite important, I think. Yeah, for me it is. It's a sort of trigger. It's difficult to work without any solution for everybody. I mean, you don't make a fantastic dinner for yourself. Of course, some people do that, but I'm not that person. I eat a banana or yogurt or something because it's so fucking boring to make dinner for yourself. It's a little bit the same when you are in your studio. Of course, you want to do it for some reason, it's so much easier. But uh, I mean, when I start working for an exhibition, it's very important to know the place, the room, and understand how many paintings you need. But I would say the process is for yourself, it's not for anyone else.
NPThis might sound like a naive question for someone coming from the outside, but when you are preparing for an exhibition, yeah, do you sometimes create works that are amazing but just don't fit the theme of what you want to show?
SpeakerOh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
NPWhat happens to them?
SpeakerThey go to something else. Uh for example, the last show I made for David Sonia in Paris, one of the first paintings I did was a very old piece I had in my studio and it was really bad. And I should take it to the garbage. I painted over all the bad paintings I have. But one piece I just painted a little bit of it, and I saw it was exactly what I wanted. So I spared that painting. But it never fit together with the paintings I worked on for one and a half years for the Paris show. But in the end it came to London when my London gallery Stephen Friedman had an opening show with all his artists because he had a new space and I could send that painting. And it was for me a very, very important painting. And it was just I mean, I finished it in ten minutes. It had been in my shelf here for years. It was a really bad painting, but I fixed it in ten minutes. So yeah, you never know.
NPNo. But but taking a step back and reflecting on your body of work, how do you look upon the themes that you're addressing?
SpeakerBut I think you have a sort of ground story in your head and you have to tell it again and again. I mean I go to a psychoanalyst two times a week, and uh many things I talk about day after day. You're coming to some painful or interesting point for yourself. And I think it's almost the same for a writer or filmmaker or whatever. You can see it's a sort of group of problems you handle, you try to handle. But I think I have always been self-reflected for some reason. But I don't understand that when I'm doing that, when I create the painting, I can see it sometimes a long time after that it was about when the kids were small and I was afraid something should happen with them, or yeah, whatever. But the last years after my separation, it was very clear, a sort of self-portrait. I couldn't do anything else because it was too painful for me, my reality. So I had to work on it in my studio. And I I didn't care. I thought it was okay to do that, and it was also very helpful because I understood much more about myself when I worked on it.
NPThat must be very freeing.
SpeakerYeah, it it was, and I will say when I felt absolutely worse, the only place I could breathe was in my studio.
NPWow. So that's actually a relatively recent development. Development that you've gone to a psychoanalyst? Because I know for a long time you said you didn't feel the need to talk to anyone professionally.
SpeakerYeah, I I always said that to people before when I was a happy girl or woman or yeah. I said, I don't want to go to any therapy or analyze because I don't need it. Because I was happy. And I think it was right. You don't go to a hospital if you don't have a wound or if you don't have a disease. I mean, you need a doctor when you need help. And uh therapy and psychoanalyse is also a sort of helping hand when you feel bad and when you don't understand what you're going through. For me, it's been super interesting. Because it's not just to do with a separation, it has to do with my life, of course. So it's things I haven't reflected on before. I think it's very important.
NPSo I guess with this new lens you have, it must be really interesting to look back on your work and understand better what you were dealing with at the time, even subconsciously.
SpeakerYeah, I I think it have been a sort of ventilation for my soul or for my inner feelings. But I hadn't understood that. But I'm sure it has to do with that, of course. And I mean, people have asked me about my dark and uh quite sad or scary environments, and I have always answered I'm coming from the Nordic tradition. Of course, it's right, but it also has to do with who I am and what I want to tell, of course.
unknownYeah.
SpeakerNot all Swedish, Norway, and Danish artists are dark artists, they can be very light and happy, and yeah. So it depends on your personality, I think. I have always been intrigued by it, complicated, and I mean I was I think I was eight or nine when I saw my first Tarkovsky movie at home on the television. It was Ivan's childhood, and uh I was knocked by that film. I I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I took Cesar and cut out the the picture from the newspaper. I still have it. But yeah, I don't understand how a small girl could be so impressed by that sort of film because it was a really dark film. Yeah, yeah. And I was also very, very scared for the darkness before. I'm better now.
NPWell, speaking of darkness, your sister said when you were younger, Callin has always been drawn to nasty and difficult things.
SpeakerYeah, that's right. Yeah, but it was, I think it had to do with that I was so scared about it. If you are very scared about something, you can also be very obsessed by it. That's to be a human being, I think. Some people they can just throw it behind them and never touch it. It's also a way you can go. But I think it's very common that people want to light up things you are afraid of.
NPYeah. Just changing tracks completely, no pun intended, you were quite a capable athlete as a younger woman competing in hurdles, is that correct?
SpeakerI was not so good. But I was good in the north of Sweden. But I stopped doing it quite early because I understood I'm never going to be the best. It's the only reason to make competition in sport to win. I mean, why? Why should you treat yourself in so badly a way? I mean, I train five days a week. It's a lot. It's a really much time you spend in sport with not so interesting people and environments. So I left it.
NPDid you bring anything from that with you today?
SpeakerA lot. Yeah, because when something is uh tough and difficult to go through, I treat myself to don't think about it, I'm just doing it. It's coming from there. And also if you are lucky and it goes very well, don't be too happy. It hurts somebody else. And if it goes bad, don't complain too much because nobody wants to listen to it. It's also coming from that.
NPThat's a very stoic view.
SpeakerYeah. But it's a good way. Because it's always uh people around you who who try to do the same, so don't be too happy. Yeah.
NPIf we turn our attention to the work itself, you often employ the use of black or different shades of black.
Speaker 1Yeah.
NPIt's a common motif in your work. Do you see that as representing something specifically?
SpeakerI I think it was a sort of protest from the beginning because my painting teachers, not all of them, but many of them, they they say that you shouldn't use black because black is not a colour and uh it's going to destroy everything. So it was a sort of protest. I think I love black. I of course are going to work with black. I don't think any art teachers say that today. It they came from the modernisman uh and um Albert's theory about colours and also Itke's and yeah, it was sort of rules you should follow, and all the rules you have to destroy, I think, and learn by yourself.
NPOne of your paintings that I find really striking is about a girl from 2005.
Speaker 1Yeah.
NPWhich features these nine young women gathered around a table in a cafe, all looking back at the viewer.
Speaker 1Yeah.
NPI'm just really curious how much you feel a work like that has an autobiographical element to it.
SpeakerYeah, it's that one had been epic for my works, I think. So it's sort of key work for me and people coming back to that painting. I like it too. And I would say I'm always a little bit happy that I have done it, but I could also see things I haven't painted like that today. But the motive is uh absolutely coming from a sort of experience from my own life with a group of girlfriends and how you are together, and it's quite complicated. It's also fantastic, it's the best thing to have a group of girlfriends that you can talk about everything and you can be very open. But you also know you can have a knife in your side if you don't look. You must know exactly what you do because people talk shit behind your back and you do it yourself too. It's a it's a sort of thing all women have. I don't mean that men don't have that, but I'm not a man, so I cannot compare.
NPWhen I look at that painting, I'm immediately drawn to the very different expressions on the faces of all of these women.
Speaker 1Yeah.
NPAnd it's so intriguing. I feel like you can read a whole social structure behind this depiction.
Speaker 1Yeah.
NPI was interested from a technical perspective, how challenging is it for you to portray people? Because your work does run the gamut from being quite abstract through to the more figurative. So do you find the figurative aspect quite challenging?
SpeakerBut you know, that painting is very, very unusual for me because all of them look at you. You cannot find another painting there. You have a person and they look at you, stare at you. There it's very, very few. I'm always afraid to paint faces, especially if you have a big painting and you have one face looking at you. You're always going to look at the face and you miss the whole painting. So therefore I more often don't show the face. You are the face. The person who looks at the painting. But it's also a sort of weak thing I have that I'm afraid to do a bad face. Not the ugly face. I mean that you don't trust the person you look at. But I mean there are so many nice old paintings with portraits, and suddenly you think you know that person in the painting. It's a yeah, I want to have it like that, and I'm too afraid to go there. I think so. Yeah.
NPYou mention worrying that you don't achieve total success. So you have this critical voice where you're constantly evaluating your own work.
SpeakerYeah.
NPDoes that change over time?
SpeakerYeah. Because it's different things uh you are afraid of with yourself. So the self-critical thing is constantly there. But it's necessary, as I said before, you need to be very critical. You must hate what you do and love it and be proud of it at the same level. You you must have everything in the process. Sometimes I hate some painting so much I cannot see it. I have to turn the back of the painting to just take a rest because I hate it so much. And then a few weeks later I turn it around again and continue to work with it. I know exactly what I have to do to make it better with fresh eyes.
NPFor you, is the studio somewhat of a sacred space where you can engage with the work and be present, but then the moment you walk out, leave things behind, or do you find that it follows you everywhere you go?
SpeakerNo, when I close the door, I I don't think so much about it. But it can come in dreams and it can suddenly showing up if I take a coffee with a friend or something. I I understand, yeah, of course I have to take off that thing in the painting. It's there in the back of my head, especially when you are very into a process. But I mean, the last month when I have taking a break from everything, I don't think about it. I think about other things. It's nice though.
NPYour work often depicts nondescript domestic interiors as well as vast landscapes, giving almost a sense of timelessness.
SpeakerYeah. Nature is always timeless.
NPThat's true. Yeah. Is there a nostalgic element to your work, do you think?
SpeakerNostalgic, yeah. Yeah. I think I'm very nostalgic and romantic, you can say. Absolutely. But the most dark things can be the most beautiful and most fantastic things, also. I think it's interesting because sometimes I see painters from 100 years ago how they have been nostalgic with art from 100 years before them. So it's a sort of shame. You'll be inspired by something because it's a question. I mean, you know everything from your own life, but everything before your life is a sort of mystery. Even if you read a lot of history books and novels and look at films and listen to stories about it, it's always going to be a mystery for you. But at the same time, you know it's just human beings. They also be tired in the night and go to sleep, and they're always crying for a dead child or bad communication with the siblings or your parents or you're moving from one place to another and you don't belong to any place in the world. You have left your country in Chile and coming to Sweden and then you go back to Chile and you're longing for Sweden for example. I mean people have the same problems always. As the birds and the foxes in nature. They have also the same problems coming back again and again. And everybody, if we are lucky, we be older people and we have the same problem as all the people have in thousands of years. We're walking bad, we hear bad, we see bad, we need glasses and we need help from younger people. I mean that's life. So it's a combination of a mystery that you don't understand how was it to be a human being 300 years ago in Stockholm? It's still very interesting for me. How did it smell? How did it sound? How did people clean themselves? I mean, it's really interesting.
NPFor you personally, does art help you make sense of that mystery?
SpeakerYeah, absolutely. Yeah. And uh the last ten years, I think novels and books have given me a new dimension of history. Because authors, especially authors from a long time ago, classic books, there you can listen to that voice. Still listen to that voice. It's so extremely interesting. But I mean it's the same to look at an old painting. Rembrandt he stood there ten centimeters from the painting with a brush, and you can also stay there and see the same thing. It's a mystery. And it's also interesting.
NPYeah. I'm curious what it was like for you when preparing your exhibition Doldrum Days, your retrospective at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. How was it for you then to go back through your work and reflect while curating it?
SpeakerYeah, it was interesting, but I would say it was in the middle of the pandemic. So of course it was quite difficult because I had to make a lot of decisions by myself. The communication was not the best all the time, and they never traveled to Stockholm to me. I had to travel to them, and it was also extremely expensive to ship and borrow things in Canada and Asia and different places. But I decided to not compromise with that. I said you I'm never going to have a show in Louisiana again. And I don't want to compromise, I want to have exactly the painting I like. And if somebody else wants to put in a painting I don't like, no. And I'm very happy with the selection of paintings we did, and uh I didn't show so many early things. I think the earliest piece was from in the beginning of 2000, I think. Because I made a show at Modern Museet in Stockholm, 2007. And uh in that time I went back much longer from I was younger.
NPWhat have you been able to glean when you have gone back through your own work in terms of self-reflection?
SpeakerYeah, it's interesting to see uh sometimes it's difficult to understand what's going on in your head at that time. That's true. But um I can also have a sort of release for the young artist I was because I had no experience and I didn't know how the work should land in other people at all. I was so much in my own bubble. Went home to my children and my husband and lived another life. Uh I mean, it was another situation. But I think it's uh important to be grateful and respectful with the person you was before.
NPAre you harsh with yourself?
SpeakerYeah, sometimes, aren't you?
NPYeah, I think we're critical by nature, aren't we?
SpeakerYeah, I think so. But it's uh it's a way to grow too.
NPYou're obviously coming to the end of an extended break now. Are there moments that you get the opportunity to look back?
SpeakerYeah, exactly.
NPAnd appreciate and enjoy the fruits of what you've done.
SpeakerAbsolutely, exactly. Yeah. I think this summer has been very important for me. I have also spent a lot of time together with my grandchild. I just have one, Ivan, and uh it had been a new dimension in my life. It's so interesting to see a new person, no experience at all. Everything is new for him, and he's so curious. Yesterday I was at Copenhagen Sioux with him, with my son and his wife, and um it was so wonderful because I have lots of problems to go to Sioux the last 30 years because it's too painful to see the animals. But yesterday I could see the animals from his eyes. I could see how beautiful a shiraf is, for example. Just even could make these days so good. I didn't just see the problems with a Sioux. I could see the nice things.
NPSo that importance of staying curious is something you really put a value on as an artist today?
SpeakerTo be curious, yes. To be a human being, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah.
NPHow do you keep exercising that particular muscle?
SpeakerYeah, I exercise. No, yeah, I don't know, but uh I always hope I was more open to learn new things, but I'm not that person. I don't go into learn to play guitar or singing in a choir. But small steps, like starting yoga, for example, and um yeah, go to some new age shit things I have always hate. I'm very curious to them right now. Not very curious, but a little bit, and uh yeah.
NPIt sounds like you're in a period of reinvention.
SpeakerAbsolutely, yeah. It's uh it's like uh two parallel ways. One way is of sorrow and the other way is of happy future. Yeah, it's a combo.
NPYeah. You mentioned that you love cinema.
SpeakerYeah, I d I still do.
NPAnd that plays into your work.
SpeakerYeah.
NPWhat are the films or who are the directors that inspire you most?
SpeakerLast year I have looked a lot at Stanley Kubrick again. But also some new films. The last winter I saw two films like the opposite of each other. I think the first film's English name was um An Analyse of a Fall.
NPAnatomy of a Fall.
SpeakerYeah. And the other one was Zoon of Interest.
NPTwo incredible films.
SpeakerTwo incredible films, and they have the same head actor, the woman.
NPSandra Huller, yeah.
SpeakerYeah, exactly. And she plays two very, very different persons. Anatomy of a fall was just about words and how you try to explain different things. It's about rhetoric. But the zone of interest have no words. It's just pictures. And you're hearing the sound from the Holocaust beside their home. It was so incredible without words.
NPOf course, there's commonalities between the two art forms, but one of the key differences between being a visual artist like yourself and a film director is a director, of course, has to collaborate.
SpeakerYeah, and I'm so jealous of that. It must be so wonderful to work in a group, to have somebody to ask when you're coming to different points, and it must be the perfect job to be a filmmaker. Absolutely.
NPHave you been able to find opportunities to collaborate as a visual artist?
SpeakerYeah, I have done a few. Me and Sophia, my assistant, we worked with Trottingholms Theatre outside of Stockholm some years ago. And uh I made um scenography for that, and it was really interesting to work with musicians and all the people at the theatre. It was really, really interesting, especially the opera singers from abroad. Yeah, it was really nice, really, really nice. But the the sad thing was that the opening of the Sao Paulo Bion, there I was one of the curators, was exactly the same time. So I came home the day before the premiere of the theatre. So some of the last decisions I had to take was on the computer. I was in Sao Paulo and look at two different screens to see the light if they should do it like that or like that. It was a little bit uh unreal.
NPDo you like being at the opening of one of your shows and and seeing the reaction in the room?
SpeakerAbsolutely not. But I pretend. Yeah, no, I mean it's a part of the whole thing, but I always have a feeling the day after that I have been 100% stupid and 100% not there. It's a sort of protection, I think. But I have talked to a hundred of people. So it's a it's a crazy moment.
NPWhat's the best compliment someone could pay you when viewing your work, Carl?
SpeakerIt's always when young artists come to me and say that I have been important for them or they ask me about different technical things, things like that. It's the most beautiful.
NPI read where you and Joachim, your ex husband, who's also a visual artist, said when you were starting out that before you ventured to New York and found a gallerist there, that you were very much unaware of what was happening in the world, in the art scene.
SpeakerYeah, yeah, yeah. We was not at all a part of the art scene. We had no idea to be it either. I mean, we talked about art all the time and visiting all the shows we could see, and it was not just me and him, it was a group of people, friends of us. But I mean, I was happy I had a gallery in Sweden and I really hoped I could find something in Finland or Norway or Denmark, but I had no idea at all to be international, not at all.
NPDo you think that was an advantage in hindsight?
SpeakerYeah, um I I shared studios together with other artists in my age from the art school until 2009. So it was like 20 years I was together with other colleagues, and I could see most of them know much, much more than me about the international art scene. And they also traveling much more because I had small children, so we couldn't do that. If we're traveling, we go to Greece for swimming and the sun. But they go to New York and London and Paris, Berlin. Berlin was very hip at that time, and and I had no idea. I remember one time I didn't know who Barbara Kruger was, and one guy he made fun of me. And I'd be very sad for that because I think, okay, but do you know who Niels Nielsen scum is? And he said, No, who is he? And I say, it's a Lapish artist. So I had another ground plate to stay on than other people. But I was also proud about that. Of course, I could have this feeling I was out in my own space. But yeah. So it was a little bit shocking when Magnus Karsson, our Swedish galleries, took Jockum to Baselt and David Svurner find him. And it was mostly the same time Steven Friedman Fed Me. So we went very parallel to each other, and of course it was scary, but it was most fun to see these doors open for us. I mean, it was nothing we had thought was possible.
NPDo you find that your work is perceived differently depending on the cultural context?
SpeakerI don't know if it's so big a difference, but I could feel when I I had a show in Germany 2011 at Haus Esters, and I had a strong feeling that German people understood me better than American people. But maybe it was just in my mind, I don't know. And then I have understood that people in Asia is very interested in my work, and it was very surprising for me. Very odd. But you know, Japanese footprint have been one of the most inspiring things for me so many many years. So of course I have a foot in Asia and also Korean art. Yeah.
NPWell, speaking of cultural context, you have been described by many around the world as being a very Swedish painter. Yeah. I'm just really interested in what you think marks the tradition of Swedish painting, given that you have such a vast knowledge of its history.
SpeakerYou know, we have two crazy painters who have been very, very important for me. But I mean, it's from my view. And it's Anst Josefsson and Karl Friedrich Hill. And for me, they have been incredibly important. They absolutely compare with Bunart and the best painters in the art history. They are really, really good.
NPWhat then for you characterises Swedish painting?
SpeakerYeah, I don't know because it's så many threads. I think Karsen is one thread, and many artists after him hard his tradition. Anders is also a very important painter in the art history. Saravida, för exempel, som har alwais talk about Anders. Så I mean vi har different wells we go and take the water from. But my well is more vars, I think so, or self-taught painters.
NPHow does it feel to know, if not today, then in the future that other artists will draw from the well of mamma Anderson?
SpeakerIf it's like that, I should be happy. But you know, even if you are successful in your life, it don't mean that you stay. It's not a guarantee at all. The future will sala angna från vete. I don't know how I should tell it in English, but the farmers, you know, when they take the seed, they have to pick the most important things.
NPSorting the wheat from the chaff.
SpeakerYes. And that's what the future do. Take the most important things. And it's not any guarantee how successful you were in your life. It has nothing to do with that. It's okay. It's fine.
NPI know that this is a very vulnerable season in your life given what you've been through recently, and I really appreciate your willingness to be honest. Um I just wondered, Karen, as we draw to a close, have you been able to find your own sense of value and identity outside of this major success you've had as an artist, or is that a constant struggle?
SpeakerIt's a constant struggle, I think. It's most about the money, because uh the prices of my works is a sort of problem, I think, because people who are not very, very interested about art, they are more interested about the success and the money. And uh that uh destroy things for you. I never think about that, but I have to think about it though and then when people ask about it. And I I cannot think I'm successful when I'm in my studio because it's uh just going to destroy everything for me. I have to think I'm Karin and I'm from Luleau, and I want to tell a story that's important for me. That's the thing, and it can be quite difficult sometimes.
NPYeah. Karen, thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts regarding your work and your own story with us today.
SpeakerYeah, thank you too. You had very interesting questions, and I hope I answered them. Okay.
NPYou were wonderful. It's been a pleasure.
SpeakerHell, thank you.
NPNordic Portraits is a series by me, Ben Catford. The music was composed by Nina Leal and the visual identity by Copenhagen based studio frame. To learn more about today's guest and all the others from this season, visit Nordicportraits.net. You can also follow us on Instagram and remember to rate and subscribe on iTunes so we can get the word out. Thanks for listening.