Artist in residence, Stockholm, August 1 – October 25, 2023

Iris Smeds lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Her work has revolved around the individual’s marketability and examines our existence and society from a poetic and performative perspective. She has a background in theatre and her project often blurs the boundaries between installation, performance and moving image, with a theatrical  and surreal imagery. Her latest major project The Average was a film and series of scenographic sculptures about the mean value as an existential yardstick. Since 2013, she has also run the one-woman punk band Vaska Fimpen.

Photo: Julia Spada

Iris Smeds

She is currently working on a long term film project called The Little House In the Food Court about a theatre group that puts up the play The Little House on the Prairie in an abandoned food court. The film takes place in a time after a new economic crash where people build homes in empty malls. The theatre group creates scenes that confront and renegotiate different roles and power structures within the family, where the family also comes to serve as an allegory for the state. At IASPIS she will build up an environment from the film script in her studio that will serve both as an installation, where a performance will take place, and a set design for the shooting of a film scene.

Iris Smeds work has been shown at Moderna Museet (2022, Stockholm), Varberg Konsthall, (2022), SixtyEight Art Institute (solo) (2021, Copenhagen), Mint (2021, Stockholm), The Luleå Biennial (2020), Bonniers Konsthall (2019, Stockholm), Växjö Konsthall (solo) (2018)  Göteborgs Konsthall (2017) Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art (2016, Copenhagen) amongst others. In addition to this she has done numerous performances in Sweden and abroad. This autumn she is working on a new commission as part of the show The Isolated Bone in collaboration with Andjeas Ejikson and Emily Fahlén – at Mint in Stockholm she is also participating in the group show Happily Ever After at Malmö Konstmuseum.