Joanna Lombard
Studio grant holder in Stockholm 1 april – 30 September 2019
Joanna Lombard, born in Algeria in 1972, raised in Stockholm where she lives and works.
In my practice I work with film, photography, installation, sound and text. I often work with the staging of situations with authentic backgrounds that deal with issues of identity, origin and exclusion. The works are observations and reflections on processes that originate in personal experiences. I often start several processes simultaneously, and sometimes they trigger a process which results in a work; at other times they are forgotten and may be taken up much later.
Today, for example, I ordered a floor plan of the building in Ljusbacken where I grew up. This is the place I tend to return to, the hole I dig into, my point of no return, a place that triggers my imagination. I believe this is where I attempted to understand the world and its conditions and that’s why I want to return. There I see my gaze as elementary and it helps me organise my world view. I grew up in the 1970s in one of the progg and hippie movement’s absolute strongholds, Ljusbacken in Hälsingland. The place, the time and its flow of ideologies serve as a backdrop for my story.
At Iaspis I want to try out scenes, ideas and drafts. The premise is the collective and its various confrontations. I am looking for an ambivalent narrative where repetition is a recurring approach. Scenarios where the human control of the group is examined. I am attempting to find as yet unarticulated, undefined situations, states and moods often comprising primitive elements. The group is central and the collective is always present. Again I ask myself the question: How far will we go in order to feel group affiliation?
MFA from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Postmaster: The Photographic Artist’s Book: Dissemination in a Digital Landscape, the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm.
Exhibitions: Children of the Children of the Revolution, Färgfabriken, Sweden; Momentum 8 – Tunnel Vision! Moss, Norway; Ghosts, Spies and Grandmothers, the 8th Seoul Art Biennial, South Korea; The Society without Qualities, Tensta konsthall, Sweden; The Black Moon, Palais de Tokyo and the Hidden Mother – A Psychoanalytic Exhibition, Paris, France.