The Serpentine Gallery will stage the first major UK exhibition by Swedish artist Klara Lidén. The exhibition will include a series of films showing the artist performing actions in both public and domestic spaces. The films will be presented with newly commissioned architectural structures created by Lidén to respond to the context of the Serpentine Gallery. Open 7 October – 7 November 2010.
Lidén’s varied body of work has included building a house from discarded materials on the banks of the River Spree in Berlin, constructing paintings made from the accumulated layers of billboard posters, setting up an alternative free postal system in Stockholm and filming herself performing a wild dance amongst commuters on a train.
Lidén’s films, which capture the actions she undertakes in public urban spaces, show her challenging the intended functions of the materials and spaces around her. Her psychologically laden performances are often subtly or overtly violent and played out in rough, unidentified landscapes, demonstrating the artist’s subversive responses to our social spaces and conventions.
Klara Lidén Self Portrait with the Keys to the City 2005 Digital print, framed © 2010 Klara Lidén
Before turning to contemporary art Lidén studied architecture, an interest reflected in her investigations of public and private space. She has described her built structures as also ‘un-building, re-cycling or improvising new uses for what’s already been set up’. Her public actions raise ‘the question of re-appropriating privatized, urban space … with the body, its ways of moving and the temporalities it engages’. Recalling a long history of performance art and conceptual work, Lidén reveals the hidden aggression and potential rebellion that rests under the surface of our cities and their inhabitants.
Lidén was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1979 and lives and works in Stockholm and Berlin.
Serpentine Gallery is one of London’s best-loved galleries for modern and contemporary art. Its Exhibition, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes attracts up to 800,000 visitors in any one year and admission is free.
In the grounds of the Gallery is a permanent work by artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, dedicated to the Serpentine’s former Patron Diana, Princess of Wales. The work comprises eight benches, a tree-plaque, and a carved stone circle at the Gallery’s entrance.
Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London W2 3XA
T 020 7402 6075
F 020 7402 4103
www.serpentinegallery.org
