Studio Grant holder in Stockholm 16 November 2022 – 30 January 2023

Victoria Verseau works in various media ranging from moving images to sculpture, large-scale installation and performance. Her artistic practice examines the body and memory formation, shaping identity through the affection of social structures. She seeks to tell untold stories, remaining in the periphery towards oblivion. Approaching destructive forgetfulness, she attempts to capture, preserve and reconstruct the fleeting memories of crucial times that shape subjectivities. Her personal experiences of being a trans and new woman is often a starting point. Based on her own story, she strives to process existential issues; who we are, why we are and who we want to be.

A Ghost’s Gaze, Victoria Verseau (2022) Photo: Pär Fredin

During her residency at IASPIS, Victoria will focus on a new project on a held back, compressed adolescence, a process of becoming when the transition from boy to woman and her recent identity took shape. The project is based on the three-month-long queer, sexual emancipation journey she made through the United States as a 22-year-old.

Victoria Verseau lives and works in Stockholm where she graduated with an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in 2020. Verseaus has held solo exhibitions including Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for Women Like Us, Fotogalleriet, Oslo (2022); Approaching a Ghost, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2021); Engender my Past, Uppsala Konstmuseum (2021). Her work Approaching a Ghost (2021) has been exhibited at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Para Site, Hong Kong; Foundation Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina; KWM Artcenter, Beijing, China; and Project 88, Mumbai India. In 2017, Victoria Verseau was the first trans woman to be awarded the ANNA Award, established by Women in Film and Television (WIFT) Sweden and UN Women Sweden, for her work with film.