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Att försjunka: Naturens kropp Sinnets ro
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Åsa Cederqvist

Picture: Värmdö, Skeviks grotta 2023
Intercults artist talk with Åsa Cederqvist

About the artwork ‘To Submerge: The Body of Nature, the Peace of the Mind‘ (English title).
An ongoing study on recovery, wilderness, and wetlands.

“I have explored what may become the cultural heritage of our time. I see the exhaustion of our era, in society and in nature, on a grand scale and in small details. We yearn for nature but want to have it on our terms.

Many people today live quite separated from nature. They have replaced gazing into the campfire or into the clouds with sitting and watching some YouTube or TikTok feed. At the same time, others do it more ritualistically through retreats or forest bathing, trying to reconnect with nature.

I have always been drawn to various types of wetlands. Wetlands, to me, represent an in-between state, between life and death, between terror and delight. Perhaps it is a primitive instinct I carry, related to survival and a longing to be enveloped and held? Near water, I feel wilder than usual.

Wetlands have had different meanings throughout different times. We have drained them and built over them. They have been sacrificed and buried. They are places that have provoked and fascinated and are now receiving increasing attention as crucial parts of our ecological systems, especially in the Värmdö municipality.”

– Åsa Cederqvist, 2023.
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Åsa Cederqvist is a multidisciplinary artists, often in dialogue with living material, new technology and archival material, with spatial installations and a kind of digital and material composting. She repeatedly examines human instincts, behaviors and the societal infrastructures we are expected to live within. She studied at Konstfack (Konstfack is a Swedish university within art, design and crafts) and Kungliga Konsthögskolan (the Royal Academy of Arts). Between 2010-2020 she was a lecturer in art at Konstfack department Textile. In recent years Cederqvist has participated, among other, at Art Biennale Borås, exhibition “States of Becoming” at Gustavsberg Art Gallery in 2021, as well as the biennial Momentum 10 in Moss, 2019. Cederqvists work is expressed through video, sculpture, installations and performance. She likes to create what she calls “extensions” in the form of live elements or through digital tools.

Read more about Åsa Cederqvist’s artistry here: https://asacederqvist.com/

See the artist talk here: https://youtu.be/dqKOhnUt6c8 

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Åsa Cederqvist represents Värmdö municipality in eyelander.