A few days ago I came back home from Athens where I spent one month making my own photography, mainly focusing on the long term project of empty billboards. Empty (working title) is a project with which I criticise consumerism as a cultural ideology by depicting empty billboards. I had a plan to attend a residency at Siilk Gallery but at the last minute it turned out to be a scam, don’t trust a the “gallerist and curator” Daniel Peace, he’s a fraud. Having planned the trip to Athens for months, I went anyways and my time there turned out to be really productive and inspiring. I made a lot of new works for the Empty-series and created contacts for possible exhibitions and release events.
Athens is a city with a great pulse and a lot of active young artists. In meeting with and Zoetrope, artist run space for photobook related events (with a great library of small-run Greek photobooks!) I learned that in Athens alone there are over 300 artist run spaces. Also bookshops and galleries are popping up constantly. It was lovely to see as oppose to the situation in Stockholm where there are not even affordable studios for artists.
I have been working on the project loosely from 2016. Now after the month in Athens, I feel like the work is finally ready to be showed to the world. The next step is to start the editing and design process for the book, which I hope to publish in spring 2023 with my publishing project Kult Books. I would like to thank Konstnärsnämnden for supporting the trip to Athens as well as their understanding for me having to postpone the use of the grant several times due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Stay tuned for the book, more news to come soon!