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Efterlanskap / Jälkimaisema

Salome Kappelin

15-08-2025

In this exhibition, Salome Kappelin traces the remnants that linger in the body, the family, the landscape, and in memory. Through drawing, textile, performance, and sound, she engages with themes such as intergenerational trauma, vulnerability, care, and healing. Liturgical structures and ritual gestures are employed to create spaces for listening, repetition, and embodied memory. The works carry stories of the Finnish war history and the family’s migration to and integration in Sweden, alongside personal contemplations on taking care of and living with a sick father. In the interplay between family archives and autofiction, between repetition and dissolution, an afterscape—Efterlanskap in Swedish and Jälkimaisema in Finnish—emerges: a site where the past can be renegotiated, and new narratives can begin to take form. The artist biography Salome Kappelin (b. 1995) holds a BA in Fashion Design from Central Saint Martins, London (2020) and an MA in CRAFT/Textile from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Sweden (2025). She has also recently completed studies in theology at WTC in England. Alongside her artistic practice, Kappelin is active within the worlds of performance and music, where she works with costume and visual media in collaborative settings. She has designed garments for artists such as Jay Mck and Liselotte Östblom, produced and edited music videos for SmilingLIS, and dressed Boreal Sun for their concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2025.

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Through My Stripes / Stripes for Peace

Salome Kappelin

performance 05-08-2025

Through My Stripes / Stripes for Peace is a site-specific performance exploring themes of healing, memory, and shared vulnerability. Drawing from biblical scripture (Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24), where ‘stripes’—the wounds of Christ—are seen as a symbol of healing, the work reflects on personal experience of illness, care, and the emotional traces left behind. The performance is rooted in a gesture that emerged through drawing sessions with the artist’s father during his early stages of dementia. As his condition progressed, he was no longer able to write or draw in recognisable ways—only able to make single, repeated marks. These lines—stripes—became both a limitation and a form of expression: a release of frustration, a way of being present, and a means of connection beyond language. The work includes participatory elements and offers a quiet, reflective space where personal and collective histories may surface.

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ON the Daily Road

Mouna Jemal Siala

28-03-2025

On my daily route, leading me to the city, my work, or wherever I go, at different times and seasons, I witness how Tunisia slowly changes. Its bright whites began to fade, and its warm ochres dissolved while the grayness of incompleteness spread, creating restless erosion. A landscape that was once luminous now suffers from neglect due to the carelessness of individuals, the greed of developers, and the silence of those who should protect it. In this quiet decay, a new Tunisia emerges—one that I strive to reclaim, reimagine, and gild with light. I seek to frame its dissonance through my lens, capturing fragments of its fleeting beauty. By filtering these moments, press them onto transparent paper, veiling them in gold to restore the light gradually fading from this place. This project invites viewers to see Tunisia through a new lens, where decay and hope coexist and the past and present are intertwined in delicate transformation. About the artist: Mouna Jemal Siala (b. 1973 Paris) is a visual artist based in Tunis with a PhD in Arts and Arts Sciences from Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University. She recently exhibited her project No to Division at Moderna Museet Malmo, which is now part of the collection. She participated in the Dak’Art Biennale in 2016 and the Casablanca Biennale in 2018. She also co-curated the Tunisian Pavilion at Dak’Art 2018. In 2019, she was selected to participate at the Rabat Biennale. Jemal has exhibited widely across Europe, Africa, and the United States, exploring themes of identity, memory, and social transformation through photography, video, and installation.

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Black and White

Muhammad Ali

07-03-2025

This art book contains the third art diary I created between 2016 and 2017. It plays between the misleading of what we say, what we see, and how we feel, often touching on the space between consciousness and the subconscious, exploring how meaning is created and communicated. Throughout my career as an artist, I created three diaries. The first diary, "Fears Fresh," came before the war in Syria from 2009 to 2011. The series captures the fear that something terrible will happen soon. The prints reflect personal anxiety and provide worldly fear with a new face. I created the second, titled "366 Days of 2012." It is a diary and a witness that consists of 366 drawings, one drawing for each day in 2012. The drawings are organized into twelve rows, each representing a different month and expressing my observation during the war in Syria in 2012. The Third Diary is "Black and White," which I represent now as an art book. The work reflects my first impression of starting a new life in Sweden when I arrived in 2016 in Stockholm to start a new life here.

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Hår-Minne-Hår

Helene Karlsson

19-10-2024

Under flera år har jag tecknat och målat hår, ofta i form av flätor. Hår består av keratin, celler som dör så snart de lämnar hårsäcken. Trots detta har denna pälskvarleva en oerhört stor betydelse för oss. Under sommaren 2024 har jag samlat hårminnen på min hemsida, insamlandet har gjorts i anknytning till min textil-installation i en glaspaviljong i Sunne, där jag har uppmanat förbipasserande att skriva sitt hårminne. Installationen pågår fortsatt och nya minnen delas. Här kan du läsa några av de minnen som skickats till min hemsida: https://helenekarlsson.se/2024/04/20/har-minne-har/

Amanda skriver:10 juli, 2024 kl. 18:12 Jag var tio. Skulle gå på kalasdisco. Nya jeans. Bad mamma att fläta mitt hår. Kommer ihåg hur hon gick från pladder till tystnad. Kände hur hon försiktigt kände i runt min hårbotten. Ägg och löss i mina långa flätor. Illaluktande lusmedel och hård, hård luskam istället för kalasdisco.

Jonas persson skriver:10 augusti, 2024 kl. 23:05 Jag minns när jag hade hår! Jag jobbade i skogen och håret fastnade i granarna. Håret stod åt alla håll. Nu är huvudet slätt.

Lisa skriver: 26 juni, 2024 kl. 17:09 Första gången jag såg en kvinna med hår under armarna. Jag åkte tåg, hon hette Hanna. Vi var feminister och jag beundrade henne. Plötsligt höjde hon sina armar och jag såg hennes håriga armhålor. Jag var fascinerad! Imponerad! Sådär cool ville jag också vara!

Mårten Nilsson skriver:10 augusti, 2024 kl. 23:09 När jag skulle klippa min kompis råkade jag klippa luggen för kort. Han fick raka av hela håret för han såg så märklig ut.

Fariba Ferdos skriver:23 juni, 2024 kl. 10:13 Håret är centralt i Iranska kvinnornas kamp för frihet. Rätten att visa sitt hår., med Kvinna Liv Frihet som slogan.

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Between n&o

Anx Kupiainen

31-08-2024

The subject is a mouth, caught in the middle of the movement between the language sounds n and o. Despite the title with its "between" that can make one associate with hesitation, as if it were really between yes and no, the image represents a definite statement. The drawings have a certain allure on purpose; it is easy to think of the images as beautiful instead of reading the message… The series of 100 images has been made into an animation, a video of a still image. The drawing series, "Posthumous no" consists of still images for an animation showing a mouth saying no. The mouth is directed to the left, which is interpreted backward in the West. Does it speak of something that has already passed, something we should have refused? The word posthumous refers to something that happens after death, but in this case, it indicates that it is definitely too late; the situation is dead. Saying no to something that has already happened can be a form of magical thinking or practice for the next situation.

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Growing Pains

Artist: Natasha Dahnberg curator: Sona Stepanyan

15-02-2024

For her solo exhibition, Uppsala-based artist Natasha Dahnberg transforms Extension Art Space into a large-scale installation where time seems to have stopped. Dahnberg’s ongoing project reflects upon and amplifies the growing pains of a universally relatable experience — bidding farewell to one`s home. Initiated during the pandemic, it transformed with the eruption of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, thus becoming personal and bringing to the global experience of abandonment an intimate scale — the artist deserted parental apartment. Abandonment for many transcends nowadays the realm of exoticism, emerging as a stark reality for those compelled to flee the tumult of military conflicts.

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to navigate the conditional, I must pause

Reyhaneh Mirjahani

19-01-2024

Within the framework of today’s liberal-capitalist context, we find ourselves living in what Victor Turner referred to as "life in the conditional": where uncertainties, complexities, and contingent circumstances not only shape the narratives of our daily lives but also tend to perpetuate themselves.

The works in the exhibition are visual narratives, weaving liminality and the exploration of failure, anomaly, and resistance, highlighting their interconnected relations. "to navigate the conditional, I must pause" offers a moment of suspension – an ongoing visual exploration into the intricate layers of our simplified conditional realities. It is a moment of pause in between our permanent socio-political liminal condition.

Here, liminality is both projected as a condition imposed by liberal-capitalist structures and also as a fertile ground for anomalies – an act of resistance, nurtured and empowered by the very characteristics of the liminal condition.

Photos © Reyhaneh Mirjahani

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I still remember your voice

Felice Hapetzeder

25-11-2023

Ett arkiv över en vanlig människa Vem fotograferar den ensamstående invandrarmamman? Hon tog tusentals fotografier varje år, men syns själv bara på en liten bråkdel av bilderna. Nästan varje gång måste det ha varit ett aktivt beslut att be någon ta bilden av henne. Det fanns aldrig någon livskamrat som var intresserad av dessa bilder, de var avsedda för hennes samling; att ställas på en hylla med alla andra album. En form av arkiv. När hon dog bestämde jag, hennes son, mig för att bara spara bilderna där hon är närvarande. Det var som att söka nålar i många höstackar.

En människas död ger perspektiv på hennes liv och en period i historien. Från starten i Österrike strax före andra världskriget (1936) till arbetsåren som sjuksköterska i Sverige och pensionering strax före en livsavgörande olycka och åren av tilltagande demens.

Hon fotade, innan alla hade kamera med sig, allt skulle dokumenteras. Men nästan uteslutande är det fritiden som avbildas. Det är inte dokumentära bilder i egentlig mening utan de har en nästan ceremoniell, uppställd karaktär; det är ett möte, en plats eller en måltid som förevigas. Bilderna blev ofta det enda vittnet till att något ägt rum. Det hade varit annorlunda om hon hade kunnat se och radera digitala bilder direkt från kameran. På så sätt är dessa bilder både mycket mer och mindre tillrättalagda. Det är bilder från en tid då fotografi var manifestation av erfarenhet och historia. Ett avsked. Just nu lämnar vi de över hundra år när fotografi var minnesvittne, bevis och historieskrivning.

Jag är intresserad av rörliga bilder, illusionen av animation, att komma till liv. Vad händer mellan bilderna i ett liv? Om alla fotografier från ett liv läggs efter varandra i mer eller mindre ordning. Ett liv, en rad bilder. Vi ser tiden gå.

Personer utan anknytning till konstnärens mamma Dorli, ombads dela med sig av sitt omedelbara intryck av en slumpmässig bild från arkivet. De personer som har deltagit med sina tankar och röster bidrar alla till verket med sitt specifika förhållningssätt, sin personlighet och sinnestillstånd. Dessa bildar till synes slumpmässiga subjektiva tolkningar, som säger mer om personen som uttrycker dem, än om faktiska historiska omständigheter vid ögonblicket då bilderna togs. När bilden som har beskrivits, visas, känner du kanske igen den, likt ett minne. Felice Hapetzeder

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Selim Ben Cheikh

This is the story of the artist's encounter with his concerns and questions.

The project started in 2020 during the prevalent concept of social distancing. The concept of distance challenged me to take a step back, creating a critical perspective on things, concepts, dogmas, fears, and obsessions. It became an intellectual process that flattened everything, creating a crucial distance between our dogmas and fears. Then, I explored my relationship with painting and my connection to the disappearance.

I decided to stop using brushes and work only with acrylic spray to eliminate any trace of brush or body on the canvas. I aimed for an indirect contact between the paint and canvas. I created clouds of paint and dust that gently settled on the canvas, positioned horizontally on the floor.

The canvas became a receptacle for the vaporized dust of the paint, which reached its surface. Time and decantation become the revealers of the painted image, like in photography, when the bath of revelation brings out a photograph. It felt magical! The painting consisted of thousands of suspended points that combined with the canvas, forming colored surfaces. I work to modulate and vary these surfaces by manipulating the intensity and direction of the paint sprays. The jets of paint and their directions; allowed me to discover different textures. My essential concern was to avoid the emergence of lines where two surfaces met; hence the boundaries were always nuanced, erased, and blurred.

I intended to vanish any trace of my physical involvement on the canvas and any line associated with questioning painting. In fine arts school, we were always taught about the significance of lines and their expression in painting and drawing. I posed fundamental questions about the painting by eliminating this characteristic and erasing the artist's touch.

This narrative of a painting unfolds in three acts: horizontal, vertical, and horizontal… This is the journey of a text that was not easy to write because, for once, I am no longer the artist concerned with political or economic issues, reflecting on collective difficulties and questions.

I am trying to show my concerns and thoughts on a white canvas this time. I project onto a flat, white surface to see them better in front! Alberti claimed that painting is a window open to the world; I would argue that painting is a window open to our inner world!

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Then as Now:

Tom Brennan

After 30+ years of not exhibiting but working quietly in my studios, I am exhibiting a small selection of my collage/assemblages and my over 90 collage diaries. "Then as the Now" reflects that intersection between the art of art-practicing and the finished pieces. 

My collage diaries have always been the warm-up exercises when I enter the studio, the quick, spontaneous workings, meditations where the day's detritus is sloughed off and redirected, a cleansing by ripping, tearing, soaking, re-vitalizing, re-purposing, re-contextualizing the paper scraps collected from around the world. And yet, within each book lies a gem and a progression.

Once prepared and assured, I approach the larger works, which of late have involved not only paper but selections from a vast repertoire of objects and materials. As a composer of fragility and tension, my work is non-intentional, a stream of consciousness which over time adheres to the surface or is playfully stretched or dangled.

I invite you all to come by for the opening at Abir Boukhari's wonderful Extension Art Space located at Älvkarleövägen 6, 115 43 Stockholm. I want to thank Abir for this opportunity. As a curator who works across the continents, her critical eye is a welcome partner in the dialogue that is art-making. 

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Notes on Vulnerability and Braveness

Zahra Moein

This performance, “Notes on Vulnerability and Braveness” is a glance at my life since I left Iran, and it is inspired by the work of Chantal Akerman.

Sometimes the last tool you have is your memory. The last way of resistance. You were the witness, and all you can do now is try to remember, try to tell people to fight against amnesia.

Sometimes, your identity is your memory. After a while, the time takes on new meaning for you; past, now, and future. The past will cover all of it.

The new version of the past. A past with a new narrative. Ah, narrative, it’s all about that. Right?

How you are going to tell the story. Which story are people going to remember? Zahra Moein

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What I Was Wishing For

Anna Kinbom

In this exhibition, Anna Kinbom shows work from this year back to 2003. The exhibition's starting point is the paintings that Anna made at Birkagårdens folkhögskola in Hjorthagens Medborgarhus in 2003-2004 and had never got the chance to exhibit.

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Illustrated History of the Mundane: Military Industrial Complex

Khaled Hafez

“During lockdowns and confinement, cement cities and dark cities become integral to an alien planet”. Khaled Hafez

Illustrated History of the Mundane is a long term project of several “chapters”.

The initial idea started –and later evolved– with the lockdown of 2020, and sustained for around 2 years in Cairo, where I am currently based. The initial project started with mobile phone photography, and collage surfaces of recycled fast food cardboard, 30 x 30 cm mixed media works, executed over 18 months, some parts of which have been exhibited in two site specific installation in 2022.

The works were created with numerous types of packaging paper and cardboard, treated in gel mediums for archival longevity, mainly depending on the paper textures and color. The only tool was the scissors. The visual outcome may seem entirely different from my large museum-scale colorful paintings (750 x 200 cm, 800 x 150 cm), though elements from my painting practice are resonating on the recycled paper and cardboard works.

The target number of surfaces, 90 pieces were intended and never achieved. After 63 works were made, the project developed into “mummification” of every possible unused studio objects and clutter; the sculptural results –pieces mummified in linen, and placed on a display table cabinet– of the same conceptual framework is the three-dimensional manifestation of the connotation of future archaeology: what would 4000-year future generations find while excavating our spatial and temporal spheres?

The military iconography used on the cardboard works emulates our contemporary hieroglyphs, the language of subjugation, wealth, power, and invasion; the entire project's choice of material represents the “collective global state of the art", pun intended.

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Open Studio

Juanma González.

Welcome to see and play as a part of the working process of Juanma González during his stay at Extention Art Space, where he has expanded upon the idea of drawing as an embodiment of the act of walking.

Extention Art Space has operated as a "production zone" where Juanma experimented with drawing techniques, varied materials, and art production methods.

In this exploration, he aimed to develop his "Urban Fabric" series (2018-), a collection of drawings made of ink on paper, as materializations of the insights collected through walking.

A part of this series has been exhibited in Sweden, Denmark, and Spain and has been acquired by Statens Konstråd, SAK, and Botkyrka Konsthall. In addition, a table and four chairs will be set up to invite the visitors to play "Pilgrims on Gotland," a board game devised by Juanma based on his experience as a pilgrim and walking artist.

The artwork was designed and produced in The Photographic Artist's Book (21/22) course at Kungl. Konsthogskolan: "Pilgrims on Gotland" is shown in the art exhibition 'Camios Creativos' at Museo Gaiás (Santiago de Compostela, Spain).

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"Han slutade väva när jag blev till"

Joakim Forsgren presenterar Urban Forsgren

Jag minns att min pappa fortfarande hade vävstolen monterad när jag var barn, men jag kan inte minnas att han vävde. Kanske fanns inte behovet längre, kanske fanns inte tiden. Eller handlade det om avsaknad av ett sammanhang eller en omgivning som tar en på allvar?

Tiden förflöt, jag växte upp och blev konstnär. Pappa utbildade sig till lärare, startade ett litterärt sällskap, tonsatte dikter och blev kultursekreterare på den lilla orten de sista åren innan han gick i pension. Nu fyller han 70 och trots att tiden borde finnas står hans bildskapande fortfarande på paus. Men vävarna finns kvar, liksom vävstolen (om än nedpackad).

Förra året ställde jag ut farmors gravtäcke, som hon broderade tio år förutseende sin egen död. En sol, ett regn, en båge, landskapsblommor, fåglar och initialer täcker linneduken – allt broderat med största noggrannhet och omsorg. Trådarna sammanlänkar familjen.

Jag gjorde själv textila verk under en period när min hälsa började ge vika. Det återkommande motivet var ett kranium, med ett stort hål i huvudet, som jag trodde föreställde någon annan. När jag hade sytt klart de stora våderna på min alldeles för lilla resesymaskin av märket Hugin, köpte jag en industrimaskin som sedan stod i min ateljé i flera år utan att den kom till användning.

Varför gör jag den här utställningen? Är det mer än en hyllning till min pappa? Önskar jag att jag kan ge honom hans kreativitet tillbaka. Eller vill jag bara tala om svårigheten att skapa själv, när vändningar i livet tar all kraft.

Vart tar all outforskad potential vägen? Enligt teorin om parallella universum, förlöses kreativiteten just nu i ett annat rum, kusligt likt vårt eget. Varför befinner vi oss då här? Joakim Forsgren