Åsa Ersmark

Escape Fantasies

November 10,  2018 - January 20, 2019


Without Title, Menstrual blood on paper, 2018.

The piece Hekate Rising is a psychedelic, 16 mm film serving as an invocation of Hekate, the Goddess of, among other things, the night and moonlight in Greek mythology. The piece is strongly evocative, and we are slowly ushered forward by a veiled voice through poetic images. The exhibition also features the long and ongoing series of watercolours of toadstools painted with the artist's own menstruation blood. As in many of her works, here we find different layers of symbolism, but also Ersmark's own physical presence and time-dimensioned participation. Newly produced photographic works are Ek-stas, Mermaid’s Trick and With Bluebeard Inside. The latter includes the recurring mushroom theme based on the story of Duke Bluebeard's latent cruelty, that, like mushrooms, can undesirably pop up and flourish in different contexts. The manly figure in the bearded chin and neck of the image also bears the shape of a mushroom, as well as that of a phallus. The bared throat, however, emphasizes the fine line between strength and weakness.

Åsa Ersmark's works are multi-dimensional. They offer a wide variety of narratives and interpretations. They hint at alternative levels of consciousness and reality connections, they problematize and analyze. And it is with the craft and magical power of art that all this can take place.

Åsa Ersmark (b. 1981, Stockholm) is an artist and filmmaker based in Stockholm. Her work explores concepts of freedom and sexuality, as well as the unconscious and its place in a patriarchal consumption-driven age. She works with film, installation, photography, painting and the human body. She received her MFA and BFA fron The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Her work has been exhitited at The Modern Museum in Stockholm, Microscope Gallery, New York, Färgfabriken in Stockholm, Clark House Initiative in Bombay and Tribeca Film Festival. 

She has received grants from The Swedish Film Institute, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and been an artist in residence at the Banff Centre (Canada), I-Park (USA) and SÍM (Iceland). In 2017-2018, she was a studio grant holder at IASPIS in Stockholm. 

Curator Daniel Werkmäster, Museum Director