ATTEMPTS AT TRANSLATION

UMEÅ ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS

Trees are planted in the hope that they will grow. Could art-making carry the same intention? Does the act of making art, no matter how tragic or bleak the world may seem, hold some inherent faith in the future? Perhaps not a conscious faith, nor necessarily a positive one. But one that simply exists, determined to remain, even in moments of doubt. For some reason, we create and we always have. Tentatively, fumbling, we gaze toward the future. With a curious eye, we work here and now.

In the exhibition Trevande tolkar (Attempts at translation), the third-year BA students from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts have worked with Havremagasinet’s annual theme: Futures. For nearly three years, they have followed each other’s development, witnessing how their artistic practices have grown and unfolded

Participating artists

Adam Engström, Amanda Åhlund, Arvid Snidare, Evelina Lindqvist Hedlund, Isabelle Nilsson, Julia Åberg, Karin Rapp, Linnéa Romeling, Lovisa Fahlgren, Lulu Staaf, My Maanmies, Sandra Lundh, Sebastian Blind, Stefanie Almqvist, Vilgot Björkman

BIOGRAPHIES

Adam Engström
Adam Engström (b. 2003, Strängnäs) is a pop-surrealist visual artist who works with drawing and oil on canvas. With an intuitive and playful process, he depicts worlds that follow abstract laws and difficult-to-define moods, which are always right on the border between play and seriousness. With inspiration taken from classical oil painting and contemporary popular cultural influences such as cartoons, horror films and comic books, Adam creates social allegories that move between fantasy and reality, inside and outside.
@dweebyapplekid

Amanda Åhlund
Amanda Åhlund’s (b. 2000 Yichun, China) artistic practice spans between drawing, painting, video and photography. In her practice she works with the body, nostalgia, and the personal.
@amanda.ahlund

Arvid Snidare
Arvid Snidare (b.1997) creates figurative and imaginative sculptures and worlds. He works primarily in ceramics where he sculpts his figures, which are then glazed to bring out different colors to give them life. Arvid lets his imagination and inner thoughts about the world and his surroundings be worked into and let it come out through the clay.
@arvid_snidare

Evelina Lindqvist Hedlund
Evelina Lindqvist Hedlund (b. 1999, Skellefteå) explores the secretive and personal through a practice centered on the tactile and the searching. This is conveyed by her working with drawing, printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance – often in combination. She is drawn to the traces and clues left behind in everyday places and objects, seeking to get closer to the memories and silent presence held within these remnants.
@Evelindq
www.evelinalh.se

Isabelle Nilsson
Isabelle Nilsson (b. 1999) works with oil painting and drawing in collage-like compositions, where motifs encounter one another and act as mutual witnesses, allowing new narratives to emerge beyond the original material. Through recurring symbols and shapes, connections are created, and the paintings open up to their own form of “non-time.”
@isabellealice_n

Julia Åberg
Julia Åberg’s (b.2000 Norrköping) work employs visual storytelling through collage, text, and printmaking. Taking her starting point in the Swedish magazine SE – a photojournalistic publication that ran from 1938 to 1981—she builds a fragmented world, reimagined from small snippets into a cohesive whole. Scenes appear frozen in time, with overlapping narratives.
www.juliaaberg.com
@jjulia.aberg

Karin Rapp
Karin (b. 1981, Bjursås) draws and paints, often in series. The motifs move between polarities such as description and association, unity and dissolution. Each image carries the impulse toward the next.
@karinrappritat

Linnéa Romeling
Linnéa Romeling (b. 1998, Gothenburg) is interested in the secular human’s relationship to spirituality and religion. Cast metal, quilted textiles, photography, and carved wax are combined in sculptures that together create a narrative. Her sculptural forms draw inspiration from barren nature, ritual objects, and symbols.
@linnea__romeling

Lovisa Fahlgren
Lovisa Fahlgren (b. 1996, Byske) explores the fragile and ambivalent in human experiences, conflicting thoughts and feelings, closeness and being exposed. She moves between the personal and the collective, where vulnerability, sisterhood and othering recur as themes. Through installations of video, sound and natural materials, she tries to get close and portray the honest and unfiltered.
@lovisafahlgren

Lulu Staaf
With dark humor and honest fairy tales, Lulu Staaf (b. 1997, Malmö) tries to interpret her nightmares. In her art, she makes as much room for beauty as for the beast, and makes use of what is overlooked or thrown away. Mermaids, changelings, and other borderline creatures often take center stage.
IG: Naulituts
YT: Naulituta

My Maanmies
My Maanmies (b. 1989, Umeå) works through a meditative and intuitive process in which the material is both origin and silent companion, a presence that allows the works to emerge and find their own meaning. Her practice unfolds in the threshold between painting and sculpture, approaching existential themes: the cycles of life, the human psyche, light and primordial darkness within and around us, and the universal memory that binds us all together.
@my.maanmies
www.mymaanmies.com

Sandra Lundh
Sandra Lundh (b. 2001, Arlöv ) is a conceptual artist whose practice revolves around the deconstruction of the self. In her work, she uses raw materials to portray themes such as heritage, language, memories and anecdotes. Her artistic process involves a categorization and deep dive into personal and collective experiences, where she processes and transforms these elements into works that challenge the viewer’s position.
@lundh.sandra

Stefanie Almqvist
Stefanie Almqvist (b.1997, Stockholm) works mainly with painting, installation and textile. Nostalgia, maximalism and glitter are the key words in her artistry. Stefanie builds worlds that invite you to indulge in shades of pink and shiny fabrics.
@Octopuzzyart

Sebastian Blind
Sebastian Blind (b.1986, Helsingborg) is an artist whose work centers on reconnecting with his Sámi heritage. He works in relation to the role of the noaidi as a bearer of knowledge, with a deepened reverence for the drum and its significance as a spiritual and ceremonial tool, an instrument that has been used for thousands of years and remains a medium for healing, communication, and navigation between different levels of reality.
@sebastian_blind

Vilgot Björkman
Vilgot Björkman (b. 2002, Stockholm) is an artist who needs to work quickly and prolifically. He prefers to begin with loose starting points and rough sketches, allowing his thoughts to take shape in the process of making. Through installation, video, painting, sculpture, performance, text, and music, his works seem to seek out the fragile and crooked human being in it’s strange everyday life.
@ vilgot_bjorkman