Inspired by the script of life, the film Mama Dada Gaga by Swedish artist Åsa Cederqvist fluctuates between reality and fantasy. As the title suggests, the words allude to the first sounds babies make when they learn to speak and relate to Cederqvist’s interest in the language of art and how it can be accessible and understood.

Just like life, the film is unpredictable and fluctuates between past, present and future selves in which we see scenes based on her life and performed with the addition of her own mother and young daughter. The fluctuations between script and improvisation bring forth conversations about vulnerability, transformative states of becoming and how she has evolved into parallel roles of artist, mother and partner.

Åsa Cederqvist

BIOGRAPHY
Åsa Cederqvist work with film, installation, sculpture and performance, in an interface between
fiction – reality, haptic – conceptual, ambigious – rational. Åsa continue to build works with a specific personal mythology from the interest in therapeutical methods, behavioural science and collaborative processes. Her work moves between documentary field studies, staged live performances, physical interaction, which all aim to push the expectations of formats, aestetical hierarchies and modes of expression.

Through the act of playing, and study of knowledge production, personal growth, behavioral science and the use of expectations and suspense, my on-going practice if set to manifest the importance of physical understanding and a non-rational and multi-layered communication. Inherent lies the investigation of everyday magic, meaning making, spatial drama and co-creative processes.

Recent exhibitions/performances: Some kind of Metabolism, Katrineholm Art center (2018); Film screening, HILDE L.A; Rest in the Furrows of my Skin, Kunsthaus Hamburg; The Potential Space, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, States of Change, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Playtime – a screening program, Yorkshire Dance in Leeds (2017); Suspension, Motifs and game, Österängens Art center, Jönköping (2016); Gestures and Gaps, Wetterling gallery (2015); HV-140 Years, HV-gallery (2014); The Cabinet and Beyond, Gallery Verkligheten, Umeå (2014); Canni-Balls -in production, Ausland, Berlin (2014); Power is Exercised, Bomuldsfabriken, Arendal (2013); Sindrome – Context, Modes and Structure, La Capella, Barcelona (2013); Excavation, Wetterling gallery, (2013); Playing with Dead Things, Steinsland Berliner (2013); Sideshow – Tanz im August, Berlin (2012); Darker than Night, Casino Metropolitano, Mexico City (2010); Construction 01:12 + The Cabinet, Konsthuset, Uppsala (2011); Swedish Conceptual Art, Kalmar Konstmuseum, Kalmar (2010).

Åsa works as Associate Professor in Fine arts at the Textile programme at Konstfack, Stockholm.

Artist web page

Åsa Cederqvist 2

All photos: Vegard KIeven © Punkt Ø