Screening of the video “The Feminist Vision” by Helena Olsson on Wednesday 21.9.2016 at 18:00. The artist herself will be present at the screening with coffee and cookies! There will be an interview with the artist after the sreening.
The video takes place in a collective house built in 1940 for professional single women and in a fictitious place called Herland. The work brings up questions about living standards and the situation of women in the 1940s and today.
What places or environments enables collective change? The Collective house called Elfvinggården lies in Äppelviken outside Stockholm. It was built in 1940 by two sisters who wanted to create a good living situation for professional single women at a time when many were forced to rent rooms in a family because unmarried women had difficulty acquiring leases. Elfvingården is located in a small park and can accommodate nearly 300 apartments, a dining restaurant, a salon and workshops for various activities. The video work has been developed in collaboration with a reading group at Elfvinggården consisting of six women living in the house. Together they read a sci-fi novel called Herland from 1915 by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman – a utopian and feminist story set in an isolated country where only women live and reproduce by virgin birth. The novel examines how a society without division into two binary gender identities may exist.
“The Feminist Vision” highlights how the situation of women in Sweden has changed in relation to the criteria for accommodation. The reading group’s conversation reflects on their own situation and the situation of women from a historical and feminist perspective in relation to the utopian vision portrayed in the novel. But the reading also inspires thoughts of how public housing could work in the future.
Helena Olsson’s work is an effort to try to understand the role of language and how it affects power structures in society. There is also a desire to locate places or areas that could open up collective change.
Helena Olsson (b. 1982 ) was born in Ängelholm and now lives in Malmö in Sweden. She graduated from Malmö Art Academy in 2014. She has recently been showing her work at Trailer Gallery in Umeå, Gallery CC i Malmö, SPEKTRUM in Berlin and Malmö Art Museum.
With support from Kulturfonden för Sverige och Finland.
Galleria Rajatila
Hämeenpuisto 10
33210 TAMPERE
041 523 2992
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