GINGERBREAD MONUMENT: THE EXHIBITION OF KLARA KALLSTROM
[18 December 2009.]

In 2010 January Klara Källström will exhibit in Nordic House in Budapest. She is one of the newest hypes in Sweden. You can see her book Gingerbread Monument all over Cafés, book shops and art centres. Gingerbread Monument is the fruit of 3 years of hard work. The photos were inspired by the mystical Nordic darkness, neighbourhoods and imaginary stories. Here at Nordic House we will greet the New Year with an exciting Swedish exhibition of Miss Källström.

You have been all around Sweden with your exhibition Ginger Bread Monument. What kind of feed backs do you get?

The exhibition is usually put up in different ways depending on what the exhibition space is like, if it is physical or virtual. The images in Gingerbread Monument have travelled the world through my website, probably more people saw it abroad than in Sweden. I have made a few installations with the photographs in Sweden, for example at Röda Sten in Gotheburg. The response is of course different each time I show it. Sometimes people have seen my pictures only on the web and they write to me and we talk about photography. Sometimes the physical show turns out to be more film-like and then the response is different.

Have you been outside of Sweden with the exhibition?

Personally not but the book is widely spread all over the world. In September 2010 I will show the work in Paris.

Tell us more about Klara Källström. Who is the woman behind the art?

I was born in Östersund 1984 and I grew up in Gothenburg. My choice of high school was from the criteria that there had to be a darkroom because I was convinced photography was my thing. Although I had never tried photography before, I was absolutely sure it was something for me.

I had very romantic ideas on my mind what it would be to work with photographic images. I was stubborn and obviously I was right. After high school I went to another photo-school and from there it all started. I have been working for five years. Now, my interest in photography has become an interest in the physical room and I think that is why I have chosen to work more installation-like in my recent works. I recently moved to Siberia. It’s a quite small area in the middle of Stockholm. I work from here and I take pictures here. Siberia is a lovely place. 

What inspires you now and what inspired you when you did Ginger Bread Monument?

Since I just got here, a new place in a new city, I must say that everything is quite inspiring at the moment. I am happy for that. It is quite difficult to say what was the most inspiring when I made Gingerbread Monument, I was working on the project for three years. But looking back at it now, I probably was quite restless and curious about story telling in some way. I had no idea what the work would turn out like when I started it, I suppose that’s why I continued. It is a constant examination on what imaginary stories are like. Fictionalizing is what I do. 

There is an interesting story behind publishing this book as I have heard….Do you know what you want? Are you a determined artist?

The production of the book is collaboration between me, Thobias Fäldt (editor), Viktor Johansson (poet), and Marika Vaccino Andersson (designers). Working in a team like this is a way of activating the images and get something more and new out of the work. It puts a question of authorship and I think it’s quite a successful idea to put all the names of the people involved on the back of the book. My photographs will always be my work, but the circumstances under which one works is always changing and I think time and place is the most important thing for the experience of the work. It has been a bit of a directors’ approach maybe. From the beginning, this series of photographs have been fragmentary put together. It’s a sort of a patchwork.

Gingerbread for me sounds very sweet, cozy, Christmassy and Swedish, but what exactly did you want to communicate with the title?

It’s quite hard to answer exact on a question concerning a project involving a fair amount of intuition. At the time I was thinking of creating a book, I was examining my neighborhoods and traveling in Sweden, I was enjoying Nordic darkness and most of the pictures were pretty black. Gingerbread Monument is simply a two-word combination of a lot of different thoughts on photography.

You have some plans doing a project in Japan. What will it be?

There are a lot of reasons to go to Japan. I was there once and I really want to go back. I don’t have a specific project there. When I came home from my last trip I could see from my pictures I had been somewhere very different from home.

Can you tell us a few things about the pictures? Who are the characters, why and where?

Most of the places are from where I live and the portraits are mostly friends and family. It is an examination of the familiar and what the photograph itself makes out of making a picture of a specific moment. I guess I train myself in looking closely; it’s a kind of phenomenological occupation I suppose. The results are fragments from what those examinations might have been. Right there and then.

You have also an installation attached to the photo exhibition. How come that you have different setups?

I want to work site-specific. I think pictures in a room are very fascinating. That room could be a book. When the room is an exhibition space like in Budapest, I want to do something for that specific occasion. I haven’t done this combination before so I think both installation, book and projection could be fun.

The website of the photographer

Nordic House invites you to the opening of Klara Källström Swedish photographer’s exhibition "Gingerbread Monument" on 7th January 2010. The event starts at 19.00 in Nordic House. The exhibition can be visited till 31st January.