Magasin <3 Stockholm School of Economics

From May 22, 2013 to February 21, 2014, Magasin III and SSE presented eight video works by seven prominent women artists in the School’s atrium—a collaboration that helped launch SSE Art Initiative.

Magasin III video art program in the SSE atrium

About the film program

Program: Magasin <3 Stockholm School of Economics
Dates: 2013–2014
Location: SSE atrium
Partners: Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art and SSE Art Initiative
Curator: Nina Øverli
Artists: Janine Antoni, Smadar Dreyfus, Jumana Emil Abboud, Kimsooja, Sigalit Landau, Sam Taylor-Johnson and Marijke van Warmerdam

Magasin III and SSE joined forces to present nine prominent video-based artworks from the Magasin III collection in the School’s atrium. Central to the initiative was the ambition to convey the experimental and groundbreaking ways of seeing represented by the works.

The program began with Touch (2002) by Janine Antoni. In the video installation, Antoni balances on a tightrope. The camera angle makes it appear that she is walking along the horizon itself.

Other works in the program included Brontosaurus by Sam Taylor-Johnson and Standing on a Watermelon in the Dead Sea by Sigalit Landau.

A symposium on World Trade in a Postcolonial Era was also held in connection with the exhibition.

The conversations that developed around the films among students and faculty helped establish SSE Art Initiative. In 2023, Magasin III and SSE returned to the collaboration with a new film program marking its tenth anniversary. Explore SSE X Magasin III – a film program.

A shift in perspective

The invention of the camera has particular significance in art history—and especially for women artists. Photojournalists and documentary photographers Dorothea Lange and Diane Arbus, avant-garde filmmakers Maya Deren and Agnès Varda, and groundbreaking video artists Joan Jonas and Martha Rosler all used the camera to accomplish something new.

The video art shown in the SSE atrium was created by women who can be understood as following paths opened by these pioneers. Each installation introduced a subtle but perceptible shift in perspective, remoulding ways of seeing and questioning established norms and conventions.

The project expressed a conviction shared by Magasin III and SSE: art continually grows and becomes richer as it is viewed, questioned and challenged by new audiences in new situations.

If I could walk anywhere, where would I walk? And that brought me to the horizon line.
Janine Antoni
On Touch, 2002

About the artists

Janine Antoni works across performance, sculpture, photography and video, often using her own body and everyday actions to examine intimacy, balance and the relationship between artist and viewer.

Smadar Dreyfus creates video and sound installations that explore language, memory, identity and the ways political realities are carried through voices and places.

Jumana Emil Abboud works with drawing, video, performance and storytelling. Her practice frequently draws on Palestinian folklore, landscape and memory.

Kimsooja is known for video, performance and installation works concerned with migration, identity, movement and the human condition, often using the Korean textile bundle known as the bottari.

Sigalit Landau works with video, sculpture and performance, bringing the body into direct contact with landscape and materials to address personal, social and political experience.

Sam Taylor-Johnson works in photography, film and video, exploring psychology, vulnerability, identity and the tension between stillness and movement.

Marijke van Warmerdam creates films, photographs and sculptures that isolate simple everyday moments, often using repetition and looping to heighten perception.

Explore further: Read about the exhibition and artists at Magasin III.