Avesta Art: Connecting industrial heritage with the digital world

By Malin Norman

Every summer, Verket organises Avesta Art – a contemporary art exhibition with artists from around the world. Opening on 23 May, Earthly Bodies Born of Love will feature installations, moving images, sound, video games, textiles and sculptures.

“This year’s Avesta Art investigates how industrial history and digital systems are interconnected,” says Karolina Aastrup, curator. “The old ironworks becomes an active part of the exhibition. It’s a magnificent location, enticing visitors’ imagination even before they enter the building.”

Diana Orving, Shapeshifter. Photo: Joanna Wierzbicka.

In The Earth is the Ear of the Bear and Penelope, Tuomas A. Laitinen draws on Nordic folklore and Greek mythology, using ultrasonic speakers. “Sounds appear and fade as you move, drawing you into a hypnotic and intimate experience,” explains Aastrup. “Invisible to the eye, you can certainly feel it in the body.”

Textile installations by Diana Orving will be on display including Nebulae, which descends from the 17-metre-high ceiling and appears as a giant fluffy cloud. Small Void by Alice Bucknell is a two-player computer game on how we communicate and try to connect, even when understanding breaks down. Also by Bucknell, Ground Truthing explores how we perceive and understand the Earth through satellites, data, and digital models.

Photo: Therese Asplund.

In Selma Selman’s video Motherboards, visitors can follow the dismantling of electronic devices to extract gold. Here, technology is presented as something shaped by – and in turn shaping – how people live and work. Similarly, in Beyond Signals II, Theresa Traore Dahlberg works with metal from disused 3G and 4G systems. “It centres on what’s left behind, and on how value shifts over time,” says the curator. “The metal carries traces of its past and in its new form, the material persists, still marked by what it once was.”

Avesta Art also presents River Biographies by Lundahl & Seitl. It explores the relationship between bodies and landscapes, where the river is not separate from our being, but already part of it. At certain times, participants are guided through a choreographed sequence in which vision is limited and other senses are amplified.

And last but not least, the site-specific Where Should We Begin? by Oleksandr (Sasha) Kutovyi creates a dystopian landscape, drawing attention to one of the most dangerous places to work when the ironworks was in operation. Aastrup adds; “It focuses on the memory of the labour and the power structures that continue to shape life today.”

In addition to Avesta Art’s exhibition, visitors can explore the history of the ironworks, join guided tours, and take a well-deserved break in the museum’s café.