The Swedish artist Ann-Sofie Sidén tells stories which seem abysmal and disturbing, because they reveal the absurdity of the so-called normal and everyday life. Relentlessly, with an archaeologist's exactness and an analyst's view, she examines the common structures of power and dependence. She uncovers – layer after layer - the abysses of the human psyche. The centre of her works is the individual, a being with a soul that is constantly trying to master contradictory demands and charges.
Sidén's stories are never straight. They develop – on different levels – between nearly insurmountable contrasts. One of her supreme subjects is the ambivalence and duality between normality and madness, fiction and truth, psychology and history. In that tension, her artistic work deals with social life and human relations which are marked by injuries, hierarchies, dependencies, controls and supervision. Although her oeuvre seems to be impartial and controlled, it reflects the artists personal life. She balances between subjective feeling and precise observation, proximity and distance, intimacy and strangeness – and she remains impartial and avoids any moralizing guidance.
Works (selection):
Codex (1993-2005) can be seen in Galerie Christine König, Vienna, from June 30th to July 30th, 2005. It presents eleven crime cases in Swedish court records from 1475 to 1833, which culminate in public sentences on women. In her work, Sidén resumes these cases and offers the chance to doubt sentences which were executed a long time ago.
QM, I think I call her QM (1997): a film about an analyst. In her flat, she discovers an archaic, mud-covered creature, the "Queen of Mud", who is acted by the artist herself. A complex interplay develops between the two figures, based an obsession, survey, vulnerability and being on each other's mercy.
Warte Mal! (1999): It is in the Wiener Secession that Ann-Sofi Sidén shows this touching installation. Its title (Wait a minute!), a harmless invitation to stop, turns out to be the first and often only words which the prostitute girls at the Czech-German border learn for stopping the – mainly German – drivers. Warte Mal! is the shocking social portrait of a region in which mass prostitution and traffic with women have become normal. Sidén has spent nearly a year in the transit area between the former communist and the Western World. She has worked her experiences in a three-dimensional installation of moving and frozen pictures, texts and sounds.
Poshlust (2003) can be seen from April 20th to August 28th, 2005 in Atelier Augarten, Vienna. It's a little profound series of photography about white horses in World War II. As in Codex, there is a transformation: formally, by taking photos of existing pictures and the side-by-side arrangement of front side and back side; in substance, by the displacement of the angle. Who has ever regarded a war from the angle of horses?
Profile:
Ann-Sofi Sidén was born in Stockholm in 1962. She lives and works in Berlin, New York and Stockholm. From 1986 to 1992 she studied at art academies in Stockholm, Maine and Berlin. She got a scholarship for studio programmes at the P.S.1 in New York (1993/94), the DAAD in Berlin (2001) and at Atelier Augarten in Vienna (2003). Her work contains a vast variety of sculpture as well as photography, videos, films and texts. Sidén's works have been bought by major international museums and collections.
Exhibitions (selection):
Solo Exhibitions: 2005 Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin; Galerie Christine König, Vienna / 2004 Moderna Museet Stockholm, Stockholm / 2003 Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne / 2002 ArtPlace, San Antonio, Texas; Hayward Gallery, London / 2001 Galerie Christine König, Vienna; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris / 2000 Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC / 1999 Secession, Vienna / 1996 Museum Malmö, Malmö / 1995 Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm.
Group Exhibitions: 2005 Becoming Animal, MassMoca, North Adams; Das Neue II, Atelier Augarten, Vienna / 2004 Berlin North – Zeitgenössische Künstler aus den nordischen Ländern in Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Born to be a Star, Künstlerhaus, Vienna / 2003 Fast Forward, ZKM Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe / 2001 Berlin Biennale, Kunstwerke Berlin, Berlin / 2002 Biennale of Sydney, Sydney; Die Wohltat der Kunst. Post/Feministische Positionen der 90er Jahre, Sammlung Goetz, Munich / 2000 Organising Freedom, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Stockholm / 1999 Midnight Walkers & City Sleepers, Red Light District Amsterdam; dAPERTutto, 48. Biennale di Venezia, Venice; Dial M for..., Kunstverein München, Munich; Carnegie International 1999/2000, Pittsburgh / 1998 Nuit Blanche, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; XXIV Biennale de Sao Paolo, Sao Paolo; Manifesta 2, Luxemburg / 1997 Zonen der Ver-Störung, Steirischer Herbst, Graz.
Publications (selection):
Ann-Sofi Sidén: In Between the best of Worlds, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Göttingen 2004; Ann-Sofi Sidén, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne 2004; Ann-Sofi Sidén – Enquete. The Panning Eye Revisited, Museé d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris 2001; Ann-Sofi Sidén - Warte Mal!, Secession, Vienna 1999.
Illustrations:
Fideicommissum, 2000, bronze, 100 x 60 x 70 cm.
Eva, 2001, from the series "Motel Hubert", colour photo on aluminium, 76 x 51 cm (is part of the installation Warte Mal!).
All illustrations: Courtesy Galerie Christine König, Vienna.
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