What's in Your Suitcase
13.09.24 – 24.11.24
Laleh Kazemi Veisari, Samaneh Roghani, Nazanin Raissi, Malin Holgersson, Afrang Nordlöf Malekian
Röda Sten Konsthall
All the works presented in What´s in Your Suitcase revolve around themes of memory, displacement and censorship. The suitcase refers to the actual piece of luggage that we might take along with us on a trip or when moving to another country, as well as the baggage, the history and trauma, that weighs us down. Building on different experiences, the artists presented at the exhibition investigate themes of memory, displacement and censorship. Rooted in generational trauma involving turmoil and migration, and fueled by the Women, Life, Freedom resistance movement started in Iran in 2022, What’s in Your Suitcase presents five distinct micronarratives.
The exhibition’s title draws inspiration both from the luggage that we take along with us on trips, and the symbolic baggage that we carry around with us over the course of our lives: memories of things we’d prefer to leave behind.
In their newly commissioned works, Afrang Nordlöf Malekian, Nazanin Raissi and Laleh Kazemi Veisari intertwine the present and an imagined future with personal and collective memories and histories. Samaneh Roghani uses her activism as a starting point to portray experiences of resistance in Iran, and later in Sweden.
The exhibition also provides a bird’s eye view of art censorship, both in Sweden and in the wider international context. Malin Holgersson investigates contemporary and historical blind spots around the issue, scrutinising these prohibitions and their consequences through a queer and anti-nationalist lens.
United and inspired by the metaphor of the suitcase, the artists in this exhibition reveal the urgent burdens they have been shouldering. At the same time, the concept stands for an open question about what we carry in our actual suitcases – on vacation and business trips, or as refugees – and whether we are ready to deal with the contents responsibly.
Read more on Röda Sten's website down below.
