Border: Molly Grad at HOI

Molly Grad is an interdisciplinary artist and writer, working across sculpture, painting, textiles, and public interventions. Her practice seeks out hidden histories and marginalised experiences in order to explore redemptive modes of expression. Grad's work is fuelled by concerns around the social and environmental responsibilities attached to acts of creation and creativity.

Grad is highlighting the aesthetic possibilities of otherwise overlooked and trodden upon quotidian elements, describing them as “sites of occurrence”, there is equally a personal association with these depictions. Grad reflects on the parallels that can be drawn between these civic incursions and womanhood as well as other communities across gender, ethnicity, and orientation, probing the tropes of what is visible, what is seen, what is acknowledged, and what is valued.

For twenty years, Grad worked as a designer for brands such as Stella McCartney and Yves Saint Laurent, as well as designing costumes for artists and filmmakers such as Beyoncé and Martin Scorsese. Since leaving the fashion industry in 2019, Grad turned to art out of an interest in upending social hierarchies by engaging with the human experience in ways that her previous career path did not allow.

Grad is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art in London, and has an office/studio at the House of Innovation on Norrtullsgatan 2.

XV by Molly Grad. Painting, 2026.