Term: February – April 2023
Johanna Oskarsson(b.1989 in Umeå) is a Swedish artist. She holds an MFA in fine art and a BFA in textile art from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, where she also lives.
Johannas practice is based in the visual aesthetics that is a darkening echo of the subcultures of post-punk and the industrial scene of the 80’s. Techniques she works in are drawing, film and digital jacquard weaving. Weaving as a method is always present in her works, a constant looking and going back and forth with the material being essential in the process. The thought is the warp and the material that is aligned into it is the weft, and together they make up the fabric or work that is being produced.
In a transdisciplinary approach, she combines a craft-based practice with an artistic research approach to historical materialism. When she works on themes like the exploitation and erotisation of nature and human bodies by capitalism, something is always present is the way we look at the natural world as something to consume. Recently she has turned towards looking at the cross-breeding between neo-liberalism and neo-fascism that is going on in the countries of Europe at the moment.
She is inspired by Deluze & Guatarri’s thoughts on the lack of resistance to the now and the overflooding of communication. Mark Fisher’s thoughts of hauntology and the desire for a past that might have never existed because we can’t stand the present. Artists like Pasolini, Caspar David Friedrich, Tarkovskij, Hannah Ryggen and the band Einstürzende Neubauten
