Hello,
I’m Pernilla Iggstrom, a Swedish Korean artist and curator based in Brentwood, Essex. Here in this space, I’m delighted to share the progress of a very special project I’ve co-founded and am co-curating called BRIDGE and will be writing alongside some of the fantastic creatives involved in this project.
I was born in Korea and was adopted to Sweden as a baby. I started to draw as soon as I could hold a pen and was sure I would go to art school. Propelled by my own cultural background, I soughed to see the world and its different cultures from a young age. At college, I studied languages and then worked in the business world before I moved to London in 2007 to do a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting at City & Guilds of London Art School. In my second year, I stared to explore the loss of my cultural heritage, using photos from my family albums as a starting point. I created collages that I then painted. I became interested in the relation between our interior and exterior and how there is so much more to a person than what meets the eye. I often half jokingly say that although I look Asian on the outside, I am blond and blue-eyed on the inside. Referring to being European and specifically so, Swedish. I might use my own story as a springboard to execute my ideas but the aim is for my work to be universal, to spread diversity and break down stereotypical and preconceived ideas.
Likewise, my curatorial practice is imbued with diversity, inclusion and understanding, to connect across cultural and social borders – the main focus in BRIDGE.
The purpose of BRIDGE is to connect people who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily meet. To break down those barriers that hinders diversity and understanding, to connect and bring diverse groups of people closer culturally and socially.
It all started at the wonderful Supermarket Independent Art Fair which takes place every Spring in Stockholm, Sweden. It’s brings international artist groups together to connect and collaborate. I first curated ArtCan’s booth a Supermarket in 2021 and again in 2022. It was there, at a speed networking event in 2022, I met Christel Lundberg, Manager of ÖSKG. We immediately connected and realised our art groups resonated and shared common ethos.
Christel shares “As the curator and director of the artist-run Tjörnedala Konsthall, run by ÖSKG (East Skåne Artists’ Group), South-Eastern Sweden, I am always in a networking state of mind, as I look for long-term exchanges and contacts that will change the art scene both for artists and for artists. Meeting with the brilliant curator Pernilla Iggström at the Supermarket Art Fair, was a memorable moment – our chemistry was immediate, and I felt from the beginning of our conversations that we could work together to create a beautiful project together with the participating artists from both groups”.
And so the BRIDGE collaboration between ArtCan artists and ÖSKG artists was born! The main purpose of BRIDGE is to build bridges across physical and metaphorical borders, and to dissolve cultural, social and political barriers.
For our inaugural BRIDGE exhibition in 2023 at Tjörnedala Konsthall, 10 artists from each group were selected and paired together. Initially strangers, their only guidelines were to communicate via email. Phone calls, video calls etc, beyond the studio space and exchange ideas – to take inspiration from each other’s art practice, life, working environment and culture. They had free hands to use any materials and processes to create a joint installation each. Friendships were formed. The result were 10 installations, showing their joint journey in November – December 2023. I will post more about that next time.
