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Golsa Gallery is excited to present an interview between Evelina Hägglund and Yves Scherer. Yves, who introduced Evelina's work to our gallery, delves into her rich personal history, artistic journey, and the profound themes that shape her practice. This insightful conversation explores Evelina’s experiences and her approach to contemporary art.
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**Yves Scherer (Y):** You have a very interesting personal biography. Could you elaborate a bit here?
**Evelina Hägglund (E):** I'm the daughter of two Baptist pastors and grew up in concrete suburbs on the outskirts of Stockholm, where people from around 100 countries live. These suburbs are places where no one really has roots, either because they moved to Stockholm for work or came as immigrants. When I was about 12, my parents divorced, converted to Lutheranism, and eventually began working as pastors in the Swedish national church. I myself am not religious and haven't been since I was a kid.
*Insert Image 1: Childhood photo of Evelina in Stockholm suburbs.* (Caption: Evelina Hägglund in her childhood home in the suburbs of Stockholm.)
My teenage years were messy. I skipped school a lot. Seeking a fresh start, I left my Stockholm suburb for the US at 16, alone and barely knowing any English. I lived with a conservative family in Kansas for a year. After the US, I moved to Spain, learned Spanish, and then spent time in Latin America. I lived in Slovenia for five years for my BFA, and in the UK for three years for my MFA at Goldsmiths. Two years ago, I returned to Stockholm.
*Insert Image 2: Evelina during her travels or at an art school.* (Caption: Evelina during her studies abroad.)
My life experiences taught me that there is always more than one truth and perspective. Having lived in different countries and spoken different languages, I can say there is a reality before language and identity. This outsider's position is what my work explores—being outside language and culture, common in globalization.
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**Y:** If I imagine the most perfectly elegant art room, it would probably be something like a Giacometti sculpture and a Brice Marden painting, and I find both elements very much in your work. It's sort of a continuation of Modern Masters but by a woman and completely with its own feeling. How do you feel about this?
**E:** I appreciate that comparison. However, I want to address the failure of both abstraction and figuration in the 20th and 21st centuries. Instead of reproducing their work, I let figurative and abstract elements clash and coexist until something new emerges. My aim is to create a fusion beyond traditional abstraction and figuration, something without a name yet.
I value learning from history. Giacometti's skill in "taking the fat off space" is relatable, despite his complexities. Western art history shifted towards abstraction post-WWII to distinguish from heroic figurative sculpture associated with rulers and violence. Despite this shift, abstraction hasn't improved the world either. I strive for a new fusion of abstraction and figuration, something greater than the sum of its parts.
*Insert Image 3: One of Evelina's abstract-figurative sculptures.* (Caption: A sculpture by Evelina Hägglund blending abstraction and figuration.)
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**Y:** Personally, I have always connected very strongly to art, and a life that feels ascetic, or maybe rudimentary, is a better word, or essential. I find a lot of joy in a simple life and think there is a lot of aesthetic quality to it. In some way, that is a nostalgic notion that I try to avoid in my life, but life used to be more simple, and if you go to the countryside, it still is. And often, things are prettier there and seem more meaningful. Especially because there are less of them, so each sort of fulfills a real purpose and has no replacement part. I'm not quite sure if I'm going off track here, but your work very much connects to this feeling in me. It's Art Povera-like in a sense, but it also uses the most basic or essential materials—clay, steel, graphite, nails—and not some fancy contemporary variations of it. Do you think often about the past? Or what does my statement here make you think about?
**E:** That is beautiful. Like you, I'm not into nostalgia or the idea that "it was better before." My work is diaristic, informed by my personal life and the time I live in. When I think of the past, I want a future to believe in. I find hope in repurposing materials from modernity, changing the past to influence the present. My work reflects a wish for a better world, lingering between failed attempts, visions, and hope. I'm not tied to specific materials; I use what I find and what I can afford.
*Insert Image 4: Artwork made from repurposed materials.* (Caption: Evelina Hägglund's piece made from repurposed materials.)
The search for meaning drives human history, and my work is no exception. In a world full of meaninglessness, work that genuinely makes sense is critical.
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**Y:** Following on the above, I think that your work is fundamentally elegant and beautiful. At the same time, it is somehow edgy, almost in a literal sense, if you think about the nails or the metal used to tie the sculptures together or the rebar per se. Is this important to you? Does the sculpture need to feel dangerous, or do you just like the rawness of the material?
**E:** I never intended for my work to feel violent, but it does absorb its surroundings. Given that we live in a world where causing pain and damage is still prevalent, the work inevitably reflects that. So sometimes, the work captures and holds onto this sense of violence, materially.
*Insert Image 5: Close-up of a sculpture with nails and metal ties.* (Caption: Detail of a sculpture by Evelina Hägglund showcasing its raw materials.)
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**Y:** One of the reasons I relate to your work is that it feels sculptural, even if it's what you call a drawing or also the realistic portraits. Or maybe it's more something I would call material in opposition to something that I would call picturesque or with an illusionary quality. Like it is about the object in the space and in the world and not some sort of metaphysical dimension or narrative. It's also not fancy, and it doesn't need good light because it's materially so sound and of the real world, no makeup that gets exposed in the sun. Do I see this correctly?
**E:** I feel that the distinction between material work and picturesque work, or work with an illusionary quality, is important for our conversation. You understand correctly that I think of all my work as sculptural, as material. How something looks is only the skin of what takes up space. The image is the outermost layer of a presence, and honestly, often, it's just in the way, kind of like a border. So, I prefer not to deal with images. I like it raw, real, physical.
*Insert Image 6: A piece of Evelina’s work that emphasizes its materiality.* (Caption: A work by Evelina Hägglund that highlights its raw, material quality.)
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**Y:** In some ways, I feel like we have a similar practice, where multiple independent series have their inherent development and then get combined in exhibitions. For me, it's usually one or two figures or characters that the show is based around—often they are in love with each other, or there is some sort of romantic element—and then there is their environment, which could be the paintings, for example. But I wonder how this works for you, like how does it come together for you? Say in this exhibition in particular?
**E:** It is romantic that your sculptures are often in love with each other. I agree that, in some ways, we have similar practices. My works also tend to like each other a lot, even if they don't look like a match at first glance. You and I both create seemingly distinct series that come together in exhibitions. I always work on several pieces at once, so my works don't feel like separate series. I approach the same thing—wordless experience—the separation between the world and its representation—from different angles, in different materials.
*Insert Image 7: A view of Evelina’s studio with various works in progress.* (Caption: Evelina Hägglund's studio, showcasing multiple works in progress.)
I'm fascinated by how you create figures and their environment. For me, the borders between inner and outer environments are extremely blurred. The inner environment is the outer, and the outer surrounding is the inner landscape. When I work, there is no clear distinction between me, the figures, and the environment. Everything is figurative and abstract, fluid and flowing. That's how the work comes together, as seen in this exhibition at Golsa in Oslo. Sometimes, logic fails to make sense of everything, and one has to feel how the works come together using one's body, feelings, and instincts.
I love sculpting models, often friends and acquaintances. Sometimes, I create and paint imagined people, possibly like self-portraits. I'm preoccupied with the body and the environment before their names and definitions, before representation. How a body takes up space intrigues me. It's important for me to show reality this way, making it evident that narratives are often projected onto things.
It is important to me that my artistic and personal identity is not solid. I cultivate a fluid identity to create many different types of work. I don't want to be singular; I want to be several and many. I research the notion of 'I,' its porous nature, and how a person's contours are often not as strong as one would think in
relation to the environment and people around them.
*Insert Image 8: A piece showing the fluidity and blending of inner and outer environments.* (Caption: Evelina Hägglund's work blurring the lines between inner and outer environments.)
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**Y:** Do you have a hierarchy in your work?
**E:** I strive to ensure that language, encompassing words, images, and representations, doesn't dictate the work. I liberate materiality from predefined confines, creating a sanctuary for non-linguistic, undefined, raw reality to thrive. Materiality and embodiment take precedence over language, representation, and imagery.
While I do title my work, the titles function in parallel with the work, inhabiting a separate realm—the realm of language—and the titles are always open to potential alteration.
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**Y:** What's Swedish about your work? And are there any Swedish artists you model your work or your career after?
**E:** Not much, really. I view national borders and identities as cultural constructs. While I understand their significance for some, in terms of belonging or control, I identify more as a sort of world citizen. Sweden has, however, influenced my work by prompting me to contemplate belonging and the various challenging paths to it. I ask myself how I can integrate into the world differently, beyond language, national narratives, and culture. As rootless, and also as part of the ground, somehow.
Having lived abroad extensively, I've learned about art histories beyond Sweden's, making its art scene relatively new to me still. I see the value of having idols and role models to admire; it's always nice to have someone to look up to. Recently, I've been captivated by Cecilia Edefalk's work. I can't stop thinking about her *Self-portrait with a gun* from 1993, where she aims a gun at the camera lens, addressing, threatening, the image of herself. It's genius. She's having a cool career both nationally and internationally, still now at the age of 69.
*Insert Image 9: Cecilia Edefalk's Self-portrait with a gun.* (Caption: Cecilia Edefalk's *Self-portrait with a gun*, 1993.)
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**Y:** Are there any artists that I or the audience should take a look at?
**E:** Olga Jevrić. She was a musician before she started making sculpture. Music must have taught her about directness because her work really communicates emotion and pain in an incredibly direct manner. I admire that. I want to make work that is so immediately affective and effective that it just goes in, into the body, skeleton, and heart, just like music does.
*Insert Image 10: Olga Jevrić's sculpture.* (Caption: A sculpture by Olga Jevrić.)
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**Y:** How did studying in London affect your practice?
**E:** During my MFA at Goldsmiths from 2019 to 2021, COVID-19 dominated much of the studies. This meant my classmates and I were making work amidst uncertainty about whether there would be an art world at all to embrace us post-graduation. This situation made me approach my work with even greater sincerity. I recognized that my practice might only ever exist as a thing between myself, the world, and time. I'm very happy to get to share it with an audience now.
*Insert Image 11: Evelina with her work during her MFA at Goldsmiths.* (Caption: Evelina Hägglund during her MFA at Goldsmiths.)
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These image suggestions will help visually engage readers, provide context to Evelina's discussion points, and highlight her work and influences.