Handels x Mejan 2026
Whether it stores text, drawings or IOUs; in your back-pocket, an unknown archive, on your desk, neatly framed, in the woods or as a thought yet to be processed; paper today is everywhere but increasingly invisible. This year’s edition of Mejan X Handels features artists working with Paper as an object and idea in different forms. We remember through the symbols that appear on the page, but also through the smell of pressed cellulose, the feel of the sheet, the folds we have made, the jotting of marks. On paper, our ideas are cohesive. But the solid certificate, the stable bill, the definite symbol, all get twisted on paper with the passing of time.
The character is smudged, the straight line goes blunt. What is on paper is also on a thin membrane, waiting to be worn, lost, or destroyed.
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The artists in this year's edition of Handels x Mejan have all studied the Royal Institute of Art's five-year programme in fine art. Alden Jansson graduated in 2025, while Ebba Birkflo, Hanna Tordai and Kristina Nenzén are in their final year and will receive their masters from the Royal Institute of Art on 21 May.
This year’s curators are SSE students Octave Gras and Theodor Kehrer, with Isabelle Rietz and Noah Hofvander serving as Heads of Art Division (the student body of SSE Art Initiative). Graphic form for the exhibition by Isabelle Rietz.
The exhibition can be found on floor 3 in the SSE mainbuilding on Sveavägen 65 (in the banan formed corridor next to the auditorium). Open for all.
Kristina
Kristina's work is rooted in a sculptural practice where materiality and narrative play equally important roles. It involves a kind of navigation between the horizon and the immediate, the tangible. Art is used as an instrument for finding positions, often with reference to the foreground and background of landscape painting, with the middle ground as a means of moving between them. This manifests as a blend of abstraction and symbolism, between word and materiality, between open expanses and cluttered spaces, where the materials are often borrowed from Kristina's closest relatives.
Hanna
Through painting, Hanna creates a visual language for dissociative states, where what was once coherent begins to dissolve. The images become sites for the endlessly reproduced chaos of the present moment – a thicket of memories, sensory impressions and dreams. Recurring elements include illegible script, tally marks and grids, which together relate to an unreliable horizon.
Ebba
Ebba works primarily with drawing, using materials such as ballpoint pen or oil paint that mimics blue ink – in the ink's deepest blue or at a stage in the process of fading. Ebba's images can be read as recipes or instructions in their ongoing transformation: formulas to follow, observe orread. From nature and farmyard in rotation. Shifts in seasons, signals as signs and fixed patterns with moments of non-recognition and a register of impressions all her own grow together.
Alden
Alden Jansson works by hand with linden wood. The objects, drawn from everyday life, are worn, fragile and on the verge of disappearing. Through carving, they are captured in a single moment and made permanent. The work A4 is a depiction of a document that Alden constantly needed to carry in his bag. The document contained a new personal identification number following a change of legal gender. In his version, all information is gone – only the folds, the dirt and the wear remain. The work becomes a method for processing the traces of a former self while simultaneously creating something new, something lasting.
Kristina Nenzén, Hanna Tordai, Ebba Birkflo and Alden Jansson - exhibiting artists in Handels x Mejan 2026.