A big part of the concept of this installation was to invite other voices to interpret the idea of public space with private intentions. This was the first time we ever curated something and we did it together with James Taylor-Foster, curator of ArkDes. It was a really good experience for us to be on the other side of that dynamic.

"Grazing Land" by Moa Marklund

"I Promise You A Rosegarden" by EllenX

So I told u about our FaceTime tour of the exhibition at Alcova in Milan and that the rest is history. So this is history; James Taylor-Foster and the team of ArkDes, the Architecture and Design Museum in Stockholm, invited us to present a proposal for “Utomhusverket 2022”, an annual large-scale public installation outside of ArkDes and the Modern Museum in Stockholm. The brief was to prototype public space and our proposal was successful. We worked on the idea of “public space with private intentions” for 6 months and presented the installations on June 3rd 2022. I thought I could share our speech from the inauguration because it covers a lot;

Mira and I have been talking a lot about our experiences of public space and have also had this conversation with many others. It always has the same outcome: that public space is not a place where we feel safe or represented. We see it as a place of transit and rarely as a destination. If the public space of the city is designed to appeal to a normative public, we believe that this neutrality often works to expand some parts of the public realm while restricting others. For Utomhusverket, we’re prototyping a non-neutral public space, a public space with private intentions.

When we first looked at this site, we got lost in the strange history of Skeppsholmen. It has a history of being torn between private and public interests. In the mid 1500s, this island was called Lustholmen and used as a place of recreation for the Vasa Kings, here there were pleasure gardens and castles. In the mid 1600s, Queen Kristina didn't like the view from the royal castle and moved the naval ships from Blasieholmen to Lustholmen, and it became Skeppsholmen. Where the military is visible, there is often invisible sexual expression, and it is between this play of visibility and invisibility that Skeppsholmen existed in until the 1950s.

So what have we done? We have designed a pleasure garden. It references manicured walks, secluded moments, multiple ways of access. We are inspired by patterns in traditional public gardens and different heights of hedges and trees. Instead of working with a monumental fountain or sculpture as these spaces often hold, we wanted the space to circle around this intimate, still monumental, centerpiece. It’s been really important for us to create a space where you feel secluded yet welcomed. We want to make room for visibility and invisibility, trysts, community and play.

What you see here is a development of the first piece of furniture that we designed as a team. It’s called Seats, and we have worked with the same social, aesthetic, and sustainable values in this project. Focusing on interaction, having no back or front and instead inspiring the flow of a space. It’s the first time that we work in this scale, turning an object into a spatial installation.

We have worked closely with the production studio Hamilton & Serrander and every part of the process has been handled in Sweden. The metal threads are machine made, based on our drawings, as are the bottom elements that hold them together in this frozen form. There has been a great deal of craftsmanship in achieving this sort of precision; the steel instantly reacts with tension. The finish of the installation is powder coated: a zink base with a glitter clear coating. The material is all sourced in Scandinavia and is largely recycled, but the raw material is Swedish. The bouncy rubber that covers the ground is recycled car tires.

Working with these questions of who’s represented and safe in public space calls for a diverse representation of voices. Throughout the summer this space will be activated with performances where different artists will interpret the idea of non-neutral public space. This is a very important part of Utomhusverket 2022, and you’ll soon get a taste of what this could be - literally.

It’s been an emotional process since the project became so private with the concept we chose to work with but when we sat up here the other day and were done with the whole installation we had a peak emotional moment. There were tears and Mira put it so beautifully, in between sobbing, that for so long it's been only ours. Now it’s everyones. As scary as that feeling is, it also functions as a proof that we have designed a public space with private intentions.

Summing up we want to thank you James, Kieran, Stefan, Alva and the whole ArkDes team for all these months of hard work and for being bold by having us. This experience will forever be so special to us, it’s really been a pleasure! Thank you<3
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Nobel Week Lights is an annual public art exhibition by the Nobel Prize Museum where the participating artists link their work to the winners of the current year. 2021 we were commissioned a public installation at Sergels Torg in Stockholm. We chose to work with the Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded jointly to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov "for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace".

In the work we invited visual artist Jenny Forsgren to participate. Together we created an installation centered around a video work on the theme of journalism in the digital age.

“(REACTION VIDEO)” is a video work where the artists filmed and abstracted their own reacting faces. In the physical design, they have taken hold of the chain of reactions and translated it into the form in which the video work is projected. The work is built up through the technique “Mise En Abyme” which in film and literature theory refers to inserting a story into a story. In effect, they visualize reactions of reactions and refer to the YouTube phenomenon “Reaction Videos”, where people film themselves while they react to different things – everything from terrible news to newly released music.”

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This work was a struggle in so many ways, it felt inadequate making this piece in parallel to the life threatening work of the journalists. I found myself asking why we do this. But I know you can’t compare the two and looking back at it I think it’s smart, and dark. Unfortunately I found this work even more relevant today considering the way we consume news and how it's more about reactions and emotions than fact.

Throughout the years we have had different constellations of collaboration within Swedish Girls and at Alcova Milano 2021 Mira and I exhibited as a duo. Alcova is "a platform for designers and companies investigating the future of living and making. Each year, during Salone del Mobile, Alcova brings together the people and institutions defining design culture today through ground-breaking work on living environments, products, systems, materials and technological innovation." The curators of Alcova found our project “Seats System” at APOC and invited us to participate. We showed the whole system irl for the first time and it was so cool to see people interact. Kids really loved them and that's funny since we initially designed it for the club. One of the first words we learned in italian was “comodo” which means comfortable;) guess its because they look really uncomfortable  

10 things that happened our first Alcova in no particular order but kind of:

1. Got so many friends<3333
2. Had a FaceTime-tour with James Taylor-Foster, Curator of ArkDes, and the rest is history
3. Was on the same energy level as Miguel Leiro, Curator of Mayrit Bienal, outside of Bar Basso, the rest is history there too
4. Found Caffè Degli Artisti instead of Bar Basso, times have now changed and we prefer other bars with plastic outdoor seating in the area but there’s a time and place for everything
5. Old men loves Swedish Girls also in Italy, although here it pays of financially
6. Mira flirted with the lesbian bartender for a week until it turned out she was straight and slightly homophobic
7. Was introduced to Carsten Höller and didn’t know who he was :/
8. They enjoy toast in Milan and so do we
9. They enjoy to smoke in Milan and so do we
10. Decided to move to Milan bc all of the above

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We had such an epic start as Swedish Girls; two public space installations commissioned by Stockholm Konst as part of their summer exhibition 2021. Sweden celebrated 100 years of women's right to vote and the theme of the exhibition was Democracy. All the participating artists were given sites in the city and we were assigned a square by the harbor on Kungsholmen,“Holger Bloms Plats”, and a street a few blocks away just outside the town hall, “Bergsgatan”.

We wanted the two works to be in dialogue with each other and gave them qualities to have in common, like interaction and production technique. The outcome was different ways to exist in public space – to be present and still give space to others.

The installation on Holger Bloms Plats was a stage where the public could interact and that could hold performances of other artists. We had already established a way of involving archetypes in our work. By doing that we have a way into our own and others preconceived notions of shapes, scenarios and interactions.

On Bergsgatan we made a Swedish Girls-ification of a traditional park bench. Since we had been navigating towards public space already in school it was very rewarding to get the opportunity to put concepts into action. It’s an environment where it makes sense to have the option of function in sculptural work because however hard you’re trying to exclude the public they will still interact, because ultimately it's their space.

"BOYS" is a female graffiti collective in Sweden and we invited them to tag our bench. Never felt so smart before, or since, the moment we realized it would say Swedish Girls and Boys all over the piece. A declaration of both of our practices' existence in public space.

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