I work as an artist, across the fields of fine art, craft and choreography. My work spans over a variety of formats and materials. A recurring theme has been the building of platforms that encourage an exploration of aesthetics. As the co-director of the art centre Tensta Konsthall and as the leader of the interdisciplinary art programme Brunnsvik Konst, I worked with the institution as an artwork and an investigative process in itself. What happens when students build the school’s own furniture or when an art institution creates city planning? What is the aesthetic, social and political outcome, but also, how does it affect those of us participating in the process and our perception of what is possible? My interest lies in moving beyond a position of critique and spaces of representation to work in and with reality, as a means to develop alternative expressions and methods to today’s conventions and hierarchies.
Spatiality in relation to objects, the physical body and their movements appears throughout my work, along with an inherent performance element that is present through different expressions. An MA in Choreography, with a specialisation in New Performative Practices at DOCH / Stockholm University of the Arts, has widened my work with performance, body and space. My Master project was a personal study into the movements of my own neighbourhood with questions on how we are choreographed, and how we choreograph ourselves, in a place, in a city and in the world.
Text and writing are part of my artistic practice, as well as textile, wood, graphic design and video. I am interested in the relation between abstract experiences and physical, craft based, every day objects. I have especially focused on the communication between conscious and unconscious knowledge in the language of aesthetics and how our different senses connect in the process. With a series of international seminar and workshop sessions at IASPIS Konstnärsnämnden, I brought together practitioners from the fields of art, design, craft, architecture, neuroscience and Feng Shui to share experiences and expand the understanding of design and aesthetics.
My work is often characterized by an intention of shared creative processes and the artist as a collective body, but I also work with individual based artworks. My practice includes curatorial and pedagogic strategies with no clear line between my different roles. For the duration of three years I ran my own art programme at Brunnsviks folkhögskola and I am a visiting lecturer and guest teacher at BA and Ma levels at Konstfack and other art- and design Schools.
Jelena Rundqvist, Stockholm 2017
