Handels x Mejan 2026

Whether carrying text, drawings or IOUs, paper is everywhere yet increasingly invisible. The sixth edition of Handels x Mejan examined paper as both material and idea: a surface for memory, symbols and everyday traces that can be folded, worn, lost or destroyed.

Across sculpture, painting and drawing, the exhibition considered how apparently stable documents and images change over time. What seems fixed on paper can be smudged, blurred or transformed.

The exhibition was presented on the third floor of SSE’s main building, in the curved corridor beside the auditorium. It was organised by Art Division in collaboration with the Royal Institute of Art.

Octave Gras and Theodor Kehrer, students at SSE, curated the exhibition. Isabelle Rietz and Noah Hofvander served as Heads of Art Division, the student-led part of SSE Art Initiative. Isabelle Rietz created the exhibition’s graphic identity.

All four artists studied the five-year Fine Art programme at the Royal Institute of Art. Alden Jansson graduated in 2025; Kristina Nenzén, Hanna Tordai and Ebba Birkflo graduated in 2026.

Kristina Nenzén works through sculpture, materiality and narrative, moving between abstraction and symbolism and between the distant horizon and the immediate, tangible world.

Hanna Tordai uses painting to develop a visual language for dissociative states, where memories, sensory impressions and dreams unsettle what first appears coherent.

Ebba Birkflo works primarily with drawing, often using ballpoint pen or oil paint that resembles blue ink. Her images unfold like changing recipes, instructions or visual records.

Alden Jansson hand-carves everyday objects in linden wood. His work A4 preserves the folds, dirt and wear of a once-essential document while removing its identifying information.