“That Which Carried Me” explores shelter as a multifaceted concept – a physical structure, an emotional anchor, a collective act, and a place for both the temporary and the permanent. Through sculpture and installation, the artists examine how we create, negotiate and lose safety in a world characterised by change. The exhibition moves through concepts of corporeality and vulnerability, material transformation and erosion, migration and collective memory. Here, shelter emerges as fragile and shifting—a barrier that can both enclose and confine, a structure that provides security yet remains vulnerable to destruction.
The exhibition depicts a cycle in which shelter is constantly formed, broken down and reshaped. In the artworks, this becomes visible through the recurring motifs of the body, architecture and changing landscapes. The artists’ choice of materials and spatial expressions reveal how power relations, gendered experiences and the politics of care shape how shelter is understood, given and denied. Several of the artists use forms that suggest protection whilst also harbouring ambiguity—structures that both enclose and exclude, materials that both carry and disintegrate.
The artists are presented in the order they appear in the exhibition.
The body that wears and breaks down—Mire Lee creates sculptures and installations that shift between the organic and the mechanical. Her works distort and reconfigure bodily forms through materials such as silicone, wood and cement. They oscillate between being seemingly alive and slowly decaying.
Look, I’m a Fountain of Filth Raving Mad with Love (2024) is a pulsating installation where kinetic movements and mechanical sounds merge into a hypnotic yet uncomfortable whole. Here, love and filth, desire and decay converge, worn materials creating an experience of both vulnerability and relentless vitality. By blurring the distinction between body and machine, Lee confronts us with questions of corporeality, vulnerability and survival in a world where boundaries are constantly shifting.
Matter carrying memories—Åsa Cederqvist works at the intersection of sculpture, film, installation and performance. She explores transformation and materiality by bringing together body and object, instinct and intellect. In this way, Cederqvist dissolves fixed categories, blurring the boundaries between the human and the material. With an experimental and material-driven approach, she investigates what it means to be human in a reality where becoming and dissolving are in constant negotiation.
The Cabinet (2010, 2025) presents the cabinet as a metaphor for both body and mental space, where memories and emotional traces are stored, transformed and decomposed. Logic and irrationality, control and impulse, co-exist in a world where emotions and instincts carry as much weight as words and language. Through intuitive processes, Cederqvist creates a space for the indeterminate as a site of change and potential.
Build to demolish—Mariana Ramos Ortiz uses sand as both a material and a metaphor for colonial history, climate change and power structures. Working with architectural elements such as brise soleil and storm shutters, common in the Caribbean, Ramos Ortiz explores how shelter is conditioned by external forces – how it can be undermined by climate, time or political systems.
In Estudio de una Tormentera (182 Picaflor) (2023), Ramos Ortiz presents the storm shutter as a paradoxical symbol. It acts as a barrier against the storm but can also exclude and confine. Through protective elements in sand, they question the idea of permanence and power, revealing how architecture both protects and controls.
In Breezeblocks (Derrumbe) (2023), Ramos Ortiz sculpts a sand structure that slowly erodes, challenging the stability of architecture. The work highlights how buildings, created to protect, are also vulnerable and impermanent. Through the inherent fragility of the material, it reveals how protection can erode – both literally and symbolically.
To give, to be part of—Wisrah C. V. da R. Celestino often involves their family in conceptual decisions within their art to explore how ownership, value and belonging are shaped through relationships between people, objects and economic systems. Through lending, exchanging and relocating use, they challenge conventional notions of property and draw attention to the transactional conditions and power dynamics within artistic institutions.
In Peso (2024), the artist presents the equivalent of their body weight in water sourced from municipal distribution. As the contents in the metal canisters gradually evaporate over the course of the exhibition, the work becomes a score – one that gestures toward both the impossibility of containing one’s identity, and the precarious accessibility of vital resources.
Privacy (2023), presents curtains borrowed from family and friends in a new context. Within the exhibition space, the pieces assume a different role – departing from their everyday utility to embody a contractual dynamic based on the currency of trust, wherein a promise is made to return each item to its original holder.
RENTAL/FATHER (2023) invites the hosting institution to temporarily lease one or more objects belonging to Celestino’s father. This arrangement reconfigures the budgetary dynamics of exhibition production, embracing a non-aesthetic mode of artistic presentation. The visual aspect of the object – at Bonniers Konsthall, a gate—appears as a given condition, emerging from something that already exists.
Carrying history and the imprint of migration—Narges Mohammadi explores the ephemeral nature of memory through monumental installations. Using simple materials such as straw and clay to create temporary safe spaces, the works reflect on the lived but increasingly distant experience of seeking refuge. The sculptures speak of loss, displacement and the longing for home – an issue that permeates her entire artistic practice.
In Attempts for Refuge (2021), Mohammadi evokes childhood memories of shelter and refuge through two large-scale sculptures: firstly, a scene of fragments and imprints, where the outlines of furniture are pressed into a clay wall – blurred echoes of a home that once existed. The work is inspired by her fascination with the hallway as a place of transition, a border zone between inner and outer worlds, where she used to hide and dream away as a child. Furthermore, a tower of mattresses rises as a monument to safety and togetherness, recalling childhood nights when she held her brother’s hand for fear of getting lost in her dreams. Mohammadi depicts the home as a changing place where memories are preserved in the material. Her tactile works carry both individual and collective stories.
Materials play a central role in the exhibition. Through porous textiles, corroded metals, recycled wood and malleable clay, the artists convey stories of protection, loss and care. In the encounter between the enduring and the ephemeral – between that which resists the effects of time and that which crumbles away—the role of protection in our lives is examined.
“That Which Carried Me” portrays shelter as a movement rather than an end point—something we build, carry and sometimes lose. The stories run like a whisper through the rooms, linking community, vulnerability and survival. In the flow between collapse and reconstruction, shelter emerges as a fragile, negotiated and deeply human process—a rhythm of change that constantly carries us forward.
Senior curator:
Yuvinka Medina
Participating artists: Åsa Cederqvist, Wisrah C. V. da R. Celestino, Mire Lee, Narges Mohammadi and Mariana Ramos Ortiz
+ There are no comments
Add yours