In a quest to merge different types of environments and activities into a manageable situation, Anna Sjödahl depicted her own reality in order to show that the conditions of art can also spring from the “messiness” of everyday life. As one of the early protagonists with a feminist agenda, her works, which drew on everyday motifs of household objects, mothers of small children and family quarrels in drab housing project environments, provoked and gave rise to debates about the oppression of women, housewives working outside the home and the production order that only values salaried work. Several of Anna Sjödahl’s paintings such as Vår i Hallonbergen (Spring in Hallonbergen) and Barbro drömmer (Barbro Dreams) have become modern classics and symbols of inner-city boredom and alienation as well as women’s lack of freedom. The exhibition at Marabouparken konsthall displays a selection of drawings and sculptures, primarily from the artist’s first, much-praised exhibition Vision och möda (Vision and Toil) at Gallery Prisma II in 1970, and documentation and original images from Bilder på stan – Alternativ reklam (City Images – Alternative Advertising) from 1969 to 1972.
Artist Margaret Raspé draws on the daily banality of domestic tasks to highlight their conditions of production. In 1971 she developed what she called the “camera helmet” a construction which enabled her to “instrumentalise her eye” and focus through film, the work she carried out everyday. Here both domestic work and art work are captured through the same process, highlighting their shared conditions of production. By rendering visual this work Raspé sought to connect to current debates around reproductive labour and like the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, reinstate its significance. In the exhibition three films are displayed selected from the series of “camera helmet” works.
At Konsthall C artist Joanna Lombard presents new work in which the artist draws on her struggle to breast feed her first child. Produced over 30 years after Ukeles, Sjödahl and Raspé, Lombards’s work is a salient reminder of the shared challenges faced by mother’s and the need to continually address them.
