Galleri F 15 opens its 2027 programme with a major exhibition by Swedish artist Annika Ström.
When Nordic contemporary art gained significant international attention in the 1990s, Annika Ström (b. 1964) was among the artists who helped expand the understanding of what art could be. She shifted the focus from the art object to human encounters, experiences, emotions, and situations.
This exhibition is centred on new works presented in dialogue with a selection of video works, vocal works, performances, and text-based pieces from the past three decades. Earlier works are presented here in a new form as part of Annika Ström’s Spring Collection.
Ström works across performance, text, video, and sound. Through a personal and self-reflective perspective, she explores themes such as self-assertion, insecurity, crisis, loss, and failure. Her works often draw on everyday experiences and human relationships, where seemingly simple situations open up broader existential questions, frequently relating to the role of the artist and its inherent vulnerability.
At first glance, the works may appear humorous. Beneath the surface, however, lies a vulnerability and melancholy that give them their distinctive strength. Ström’s humour emerges from self-irony and sharp observations of the small incidents, awkward moments, and doubts that characterise everyday life. She brings attention to experiences that many people recognise, yet which are rarely given space.
In Annika Ström’s Spring Collection, audiences are invited to smile, empathise, and reflect. In the tension between the comic and the vulnerable, Ström creates space for empathy, community, and recognition.
The exhibition also marks a reunion between Ström and Galleri F 15. In 2016, she presented the performance The Inept Five as part of the gallery’s 50th anniversary, a work that characteristically explored young actors’ ambitions, insecurities, and longing for an artistic breakthrough.
