Anna-Karin Rasmusson: APPROACHING

SSE Art Initiative proudly presented APPROACHING: three videos by Stockholm-based artist Anna-Karin Rasmusson, exhibited in the atrium, the entrance hall and one of the corridors on the entrance floor during January and February 2020.

Rasmusson works by staging complex emotional states close to our subconscious and often hard to render in words. Performances, videos, collages and painting are her media for treating situations that social science insists on working with and articulating in language.

Can she help us overcome the linguistic turn and its obvious limitations?

Beyond the pandemic and its de-socializing effects, Rasmusson’s three works also bear relevance to phenomena tackled in work, on markets and in the organizational reality of capitalism: responsibility, order and care.

It is hard to believe, but all three video works in this exhibition were made before the Covid-19 pandemic. The themes of the videos became extremely timely: during the past year, we all had to expand our empathy, deal with frustration regarding facts and regulations, and at the same time carry the fear of sickness and death.

And we all washed our hands like never before…

The four characters in the videos exhibited at SSE all deal with matters most of us can easily identify with in today’s state of mind.

I Rummage Your Kitchen

On the big screen in the atrium, the character is searching for something—but what? Maybe they are looking for a solution? The truth? Evidence? A right answer?

We can see frustration, clumsiness and resignation, but also determination and curiosity. What is going on in the kitchen?

Maybe it is easy to identify with the character if you are a student or a researcher. The searching process has similarities with the learning process. Search—and you might find. Somewhere there is an answer, or at least a pattern or sensation that can lead you towards it.

Attempt at Empathy, 2018, 2:20

In the corridor to your right after entering the building from Sveavägen, we could see one character who is really sick, tormented in bed and covered with blisters or warts, and another person trying to be there for them. Trying to be calm and loving, to give comfort, to lie side by side, and perhaps also making an effort to take on some of the suffering.

Are we really able to understand another person’s emotions and pain?

OCD/Pandemic, 2020, 0:30

In the third video, we see a person thoroughly washing their hands over and over again.

Anna-Karin Rasmusson (born 1983) is a Stockholm-based artist. She works with staging complex emotional states close to our subconscious and often hard to render in words. Performances, videos, collages and painting are her media.

Anna-Karin Rasmusson is represented by Cecilia Hillström Gallery.

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