The Toad

4,17 min

Performance and video with toad costume (textile, plastic, spray paint, paper, foamballs). Camera: Sam Hultin and Johan Eriksson.

A perennial favourite: The Toad was first shown at SSE in November 2022. Now it´s back by popular demand - and in relation to the show with Ingela Ihrman, Nocturnal Games, opening at Bonniers konsthall March 11, 2026.

What is it to make an effort?

Ever since art school (she graduated from Konstfack in 2012) Ingela Ihrman has made plant and animal costumes for exhibitions and performances. She has transformed herself into a giant water lily, a big otter giving birth, a walking fig, a large blackbird and a bright blue killer clam that bathes in Ingela´s own bathtub in Malmö. In The Toad (Paddan) she is dressed in a toad costume with a fat belly, striped tights and long webbed feet. The toad does its best to make it through apparatus gymnastics, and though it´s slow and a bit clumsy it still tries. It is in the gap between the effort and the form that all the meaning lives — absurd and tender at the same time, without one undercutting the other. Most people can relate to the feeling, even if it´s in something else than apparatus gymnastics. One student at SSE related this to the feeling during exam periods...

Ingela Ihrman´s practice includes sculpture, performance, video and writing as well as collaborations within the fields of science, theater and dance. In her art Ingela investigates how humans interact with each other and with other species, and our longing for belonging. Her work can be described as absurd and funny, but also poetic with great seriousness. Haven´t we all been – and met – the toad? The toad raises issues such as norms, identity and belonging, and asks questions like:

What does it mean to not be welcome in the "normal"?

What does it mean to take up space in the wrong way?

How do you relate to trying and making an effort?

Ingela Ihrman was born in 1985, in Kalmar, Sweden. She graduated from Konstfack, Stockholm 2012. Ingela is represented at for example Kiasma, Statens konstråd, Moderna museet and Malmö konstmuseum. In 2019 Ingela Ihrman represented Sweden at the Venice Biennal. On March 11 a big show, Nocturnal Games, by Ihrman is opening at Bonniers konsthall.