Firestorm talk: Meta Isaeus-Berlin
Firestorm Foundation and the Art Initiative at the Stockholm School of Economics are honoured to welcome Meta Isæus-Berlin, one of Sweden’s most influential contemporary artists, for a Firestorm Talk at SSE. In conversation with Michael Storåkers, partner of Firestorm Foundation and PhD student at SSE, Isæus-Berlin will reflect on her artistic journey, the evolution of her visual language and the cultural impact of her work, as well as the broader question of visibility for women artists today.
Currently presenting a major solo exhibition at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Isæus-Berlin has long been recognised for a visual language that moves between installation, painting and sculpture, and for an artistic practice that explores psychological interiors, dreamlike symbolism and the fragile borderland between the conscious and the subconscious. Over the course of four decades, she has developed an aesthetic that is both intimate and uncanny, a world where domestic objects shift meaning, where memory bends reality and where everyday scenes open onto emotional and existential depths.
Her works are represented in major public collections, including Moderna Museet, Kiasma and Magasin III, as well as in the Firestorm Foundation and the Stockholm School of Economics collections. At SSE, students, researchers and visitors encounter her work on a daily basis. Två parallella/Two Parallel is installed in the Atrium, while The sisters sum up the night’s events is placed outside the Boardroom on the entrance floor. These works exemplify her ability to create scenes where gestures, atmospheres and small visual cues carry the weight of an entire narrative.
Isæus-Berlin has exhibited widely, from the Venice Biennale and the International Istanbul Biennial to institutions across Europe, South Africa, Australia and the United States. Her artistic trajectory – moving from early sculptural installations to the psychologically charged paintings of the past two decades – has generated extensive critical attention. Writers such as Frans Josef Petersson and Monica Nieckels have described her as an artist who reveals the layered contradictions of human life, capturing how dreams, memories and lived experience overlap and entangle. Her work consistently returns to the idea that reality is not fixed but continually reinterpreted through the stories we tell and retell.
SIGN UP TO THE ART TALK HERE.(First come...)
SSE Art Initiative and Firestorm Foundation
Firestorm Foundation is a non-profit initiative founded in 2021, dedicated to highlighting female and non-binary artists for a more inclusive art world. Beginning in 2025, the foundation will support initiatives at SSE to advance knowledge and promote equality for female and non-binary artists through seminars, a master’s thesis scholarship, and donations to the SSE Permanent Collection. Together, these initiatives aim to strengthen knowledge, broaden representation, and contribute to a richer and more equitable cultural landscape.
Meta Isæus-Berlin is represented in the SSE permanent collection with the artwork Two Parallel Now in the atrium (picture above by Mikael Olsson) and the painting Systrarna går igenom nattens händelser (The sisters sum up the night´s events) outside the SSE board room.