The Nordic Pavilion has announced details for the exhibition to take place at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Titled “Mirrored,” and curated by Mats Stjernstedt, it will include a cross-generational selection of six artists: Siri Aurdal, Nina Canell, Charlotte Johannesson, Jumana Manna, Pasi “Sleeping” Myllymäki, and Mika Taanila.
For the past three biennials, the Nordic Pavilion has taken turns in representing the nations of Sweden, Finland, and Norway. The 2017 iteration will be a return to the pavilion acting as a platform for joint and equal representation of the three countries together.
“Mirrored” will focus on the self-images fostered by stereotypes projected upon Nordic countries, thus “suggesting a placeless place,” according to the press release, in a line borrowed from Guiliana Bruno’s allegory on mirrors. Particular emphasis will be placed upon urbanity and urban art.
“The artists in ‘Mirrored’ present a mapping of connections that override the national and regional boundaries,” says Stjernstedt. “And instead track a more multi-faceted view of how artistic practice may connect.”
Mats Stjernstedt, 2016 Photo Courtesy Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet.
Siri Aurdal, Charlotte Johannesson, and Pasi “Sleeping” Myllymäki are described in the press release as “innovators who, to some extent, have created and articulated the artistic realms they later came to work within.”
The practices of all three are fitting to play with the surrounding architecture of the Nordic Pavilion, which incorporates both indoor and outdoor elements. “Their works are examples of urban art and urbanity that was ahead of its time in exploring industrial material, digital space, or design experiments with moving images,” the statement explains.
The younger three artists—Mika Taanila, Nina Canell, and Jumana Manna—take on a temporal and bodily quality in their film, video, sound, and installation works. They share “a similar interest in urban subject matter, expressed, for instance, through material transformation or political content.”