7 December 2024–6 April 2025
A monumental giant seashell encounters limitless underwater worlds and bleeding, sculptural rya rugs. The Gothenburg Museum of Art finishes the year with an exhibition featuring new works by artists Emelie Röndahl and Lena Trapp, two of the recipients of the Stena Foundation Culture Scholarships 2024.
Lena Trapp (b. 1974) works with sculpture, installation, and 3D animation. In her artistic practice, she often explores themes such as memory, time, and the subconscious. Lena Trapp is educated in animation and artistic expression, but also has a background as a photographer and jewelry designer. She lives and works in Gothenburg.
In the exhibition at Gothenburg Museum of Art, Lena Trapp has chosen to create an atmospheric, virtual space where nature and technology meet. Here, a gigantic seashell sculpture, created using modern 3D technology, coexists with a digital video work that spills out into the physical room. Producer and musician Christopher Berg, who has previously worked with artists like Depeche Mode and Robyn, has crafted an underwater soundtrack for Lena Trapp’s environments and video works.
Emelie Röndahl (b. 1982) works with textiles, sculpture, and moving images. Recurring themes include the female body and its relationship to self-perception, affirmation, and individual experience. Emelie Röndahl is educated at HDK-Valand and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She lives and works in Falkenberg. Emelie Röndahl belongs to a young generation of textile artists who explore and challenge tradition, showcasing new aspects of rya technique. Instead of cutting away the excess threads in the rya weaving, she lets them hang, creating a sniveling and bleeding expression. The duality of rya technique is highlighted in a series of woven room sculptures, viewable from both sides.
Alongside a dozen large-scale figurative rya rugs, Emelie Röndahl presents two moving video works in the exhibition, as well as a newly produced self-portrait in rya.
Motivation:
Lena Trapp primarily works with sculpture and moving images. With themes such as identity, corporeality, and relationships, she moves freely between the human and the artificial. Her works are often characterized by a strong physical presence, where organic forms merge with hard, industrial materials. Lena Trapp raises questions about how, in an era of increased technologization, we perceive ourselves and our place in the world, mapping, through visually striking means, the unstable and fleeting spaces that arise between time, consciousness, and myth. In several exhibitions in Sweden and internationally, she has also shown interest in the exhibition format itself, creating spaces that not only challenge our perceptions of form and structure but also highlight how we, as humans, interact with our surroundings. For an artistic practice that skillfully merges real, imagined, and virtual spaces, Lena Trapp is awarded the 2024 Culture Scholarship from the Sten A Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture.
Motivation:
Emelie Röndahl moves from photographic to woven imagery, allowing her rya rugs to take shape in a tension field between surface, order, and an emerging three-dimensional chaos. The thick, hanging yarn on the front of the weavings transforms the motifs; they gain a relief effect, are set in motion, and seem to cascade downward with violent force. By giving the materiality of the yarn free rein, Emelie Röndahl creates a sense of loss of control, contrasting with the inherent regularity of weaving techniques. The motifs, drawn from the digital image flow or her own everyday life, emerge as disturbing and striking snapshots. For her bold and personal renewal of the woven image, Emelie Röndahl is awarded the 2024 Culture Scholarship from the Sten A Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture.
The Sten A Olsson Foundation for Research
The Stena Foundation is an important institution in the cultural life of Western Sweden, providing a unique opportunity for artists to produce new works and increase their visibility. This year, six cultural practitioners each receive 300 000 SEK to stimulate further development. Since 1996, the Foundation has awarded 167 scholarships for the continued training of talented individuals in fields such as art, music, theatre, dance, literature, scenography and circus art. Furthermore, the Foundation has awarded grants to many research and culture projects.
Catalogue
A comprehensive catalogue accompanies the exhibition, including longer personal interviews and a plethora of visual material for each recipient of the culture scholarships. Short introductory films featuring all the scholars are shown in the exhibition and provide further in-depth knowledge.
All recipients of the 2024 Stena Foundation Culture Scholarships:
Filmmaker Gabriella Pichler
Artist Lena Trapp
Opera singer Hannes Öberg
Artist Emelie Röndahl
Musician and songwriter Daniel Lemma
Actor Karin de Frumerie
The Gothenburg Museum of Art – the exhibition is financed with a generous support from the Stena Foundation.
Top Image: Emelie Röndahl, Maxim (2019–2020) handwoven rya rug in wool and linen. Photo: Mandi Gavois.