33rd Bienal de São Paulo and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati
2018–2019
Two major exhibitions in the Americas showcased Mamma Andersson as both an artist and a curator.
Andersson was one of seven artists invited to curate their own show for Affective Affinities, the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo. Referencing Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities (1809) as well as “On the Affective Nature of Form in the Work of Art” (1949) by Mário Pedrosa, the title of the biennial points to affinities between the artists involved. Each artist-curator organized a group show placing their own work in dialogue with that of others as a way to explore artistic and cultural connections and influences informing the creative process.
Stargazer II, Andersson’s exhibition, featured works by Dick Bengtsson, Henry Darger, Carl Fredrik Hill, Åke Hodell, Lim-Johan, Ernst Josephson, Bruno Knutman, Gunvor Nelson, Ladislas Starewitch, and Miroslav Tichý, as well as examples of Russian religious icons. “I am interested in artists who work with melancholy and introspection as a way of life and form of survival,” Andersson said. A feature in The Art Newspaper details the artist’s choice of marginalized figures who have influenced her own work and quotes her expressed interest “in the lonely artists . . . outsiders from birth, though some become outsiders over time.”
Opened on October 5, 2018 at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Mamma Andersson: Memory Banks was a solo exhibition focusing on Andersson’s use of appropriated imagery in her dreamlike, evocative paintings. While her references include Nordic painting and folk art, the artist’s work also makes use of elements culled from everyday sources such as books, newspapers, and film that are collaged directly into melancholic landscapes and interiors, lending them an uncanny sense of familiarity. Featuring existing and new works by Andersson, Memory Banks was curated by Kevin Moore as part of the FotoFocus Biennial 2018, for which the theme was Open Archive. “She derives motifs from newspapers and ephemera,” Moore says of Andersson’s work, “she almost has nostalgia for this world of printed objects.” Moore has contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue, which is being published by Damiani Editore.
Earlier in 2018, Andersson was announced the winner of the 11th Guerlain Drawing Prize, an award given annually by the Daniel and Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation. Her work was featured in a special exhibition on the occasion of the award as part of the Salon du Dessin (March 21–26, 2018), an art fair devoted to drawings in the Palais Brongniart in Paris. Andersson is also part of Nordic Impressions, a group exhibition surveying and celebrating nearly two hundred years of art, at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. The show opened on October 13, 2018 and ran through January 13, 2019.
Cover Image: Mamma Andersson, Pigeon House, 2010 (detail)