Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki/Stockholm featuring Moa Israelsson

SOLID SLEEP by Moa Israelsson
240x60x20 cm | 180x40x40 cm | 160x40x27cm, each silk, latex, padding, raw leather

Spirituality, folklore and occult attributes. Isolation, melancholy and decay. Born out of an interest in the wilderness of a rural America, Moa Israelsson examines a borderland between reality and fiction.
Solid Sleep is part of her most recent body of work developed around the story of an apocalyptic future, where our civilization seems to be perished and mankind extinct. A sole survivor has created her own world in order to maintain a former structure of everyday life.
At a closer look, it becomes obvious that what looks like gigantic insect cocoons are carefully handmade sleeping bags of silk, latex, padding and raw leather, imitating nature. The handicraft and the monotonous work in the creation process are ways to indicate an ordinary life. The cocoons are like bodies themselves, as if left behind by their former inhabitants. The question of what has happened is essential, but not answered.
By imagining a post-civilization world, Israelsson creates a situation where she freely can examine basic human needs such as sleeping, protection, eating. But it also becomes clear that culture and the process of creating are essential to human nature: Her objects seem to respond to our needs but are detached from their functionality. Put in an exhibition context as if relicts in a museum of mankind, they also suggest that culture is part of our basic needs as much as food and a place to sleep.
Moa Israelsson, born in 1982, graduated from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in 2010 and has regularly been featured in solo and group exhibitions since. She has also received several artist grants, most recently the Swedish Art Grant (2018-2019), the Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation´s artist grant (2018), and Region Sörmland´s Culture Grant (2018). Her works are represented in private and public colletcions, including the Public Art Agency Sweden. Moa Israelsson lives and works in Äkers, Styckebruk, Sweden and is represented by Galerie Forsblom.