Figuration, representation and visibility – welcome to a public Konstfack/Mejan painting symposium

Thursday 25 November, 10–16 in Svarta Havet at Konstfack

Arguably, one of the most significant questions for art and painting today is how we respond to ideas around representation. With the advent of photography, figurative painting long ago relinquished its primary role of documenting the world and with debates around painting’s relationship to photography no longer carrying such urgency, painting has been free to explore other terrains, both connected and unmoored from an established representational language. Seemingly, we are working in an age of unbound expressive possibility, where a multiplicity of concerns can be equally explored: from the political, and the autobiographical, to the intimate, the global and the local.
In recent years painting has yet again been called upon to represent and document the manifold roles of addressing visibility through figuration and portraiture. The hegemony of an unbroken linear western history of painting is now put into question and we find that all along we were not alone in wondering what happened to the others.

Programme:
10:00 Martin Gustavsson – The problem with homoeroticism
10:40 Lina Bjerneld –The drawing space
11:20 Nadia Hebson – Artists for recreation
Lunch
13:00 Helena Lund Ek – Portrait painting and the people I look at
14:00 Valerie Kyeyune Backström – “Black pain as raw material” – Visibility and representation in painting
15:00 Round table discussion

Martin Gustavsson, artist and Senior Lecturer in Painting at Konstfack
Lina Bjerneld, artist and Senior Lecturer at Kungl. Konsthögskolan.
Nadia Hebson, artist and writer and Senior Lecturer at Kungl. Konsthögskolan
Helena Lund Ek, artist
Valerie Kyeyune Backström, writer and critic

For more info about the programme and the participants, click on this link!

This symposium is a collaboration between the Fine Art painting departments at Konstfack and Kungl. Konsthögskolan. It also includes a painting course, an exhibition in Vita Havet, a writing workshop and most importantly a way to start a conversation between painting students at the two main art schools in Stockholm. The ambition is that these events can set the scene for a greater discussion around painting both for students and a wider audience in Stockholm and beyond. 

Welcome, no prior registration is required. 
Konstfack, LM Ericssons väg 14, Telefonplan