SSE Art Initiative presented an outdoor performance ritual by the internationally renowned Swedish artist Ylva Snöfrid. Working in public outside the School’s entrance, Snöfrid painted daily while students, staff, visitors and passers-by could follow the artistic process over time. The work was made possible by Michael and Alexandra Storåkers.
In Snöfrid’s practice, painting is inseparable from the life of the artist. For many years, she brought the figure of Snöfrid into the world through rituals and ceremonies, objects and publications, food and elixirs, and by painting her again and again, until artist and artistic persona finally merged into one.
The performance relates to The Painter’s Studio in the Shadow World, an extensive work begun in Athens in 2016 and composed of around one hundred paintings and pieces of furniture. This Gesamtkunstwerk developed through a relationship with Gustave Courbet’s The Painter’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Artistic and Moral Life, the monumental painting rejected by the Paris Salon in 1855.
Like Courbet, Snöfrid explores perspective, expression and the role of the artist. She creates situations in which artist and viewer enter a highly public relationship while the artist remains at the centre of attention. The power dynamic shifts, and the artist becomes a riddle that cannot be answered - only observed.
