Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

ART

The world’s longest art gallery will soon be even longer

Did you know that Stockholm is home to what is commonly called the world’s longest art gallery? Deep under the earth, the Stockholm metro stations host a diverse spectrum of art and sculptures. This week new additions were announced.

Published: 22 January 2016 12:27 CET
The world’s longest art gallery will soon be even longer

In the 1950s Stockholm opened its brand new subway system – complete with art.

The governing Social Democratic party of Sweden felt at the time that art should not be isolated, but rather an integral part of Stockholm, accessible by all.

The tradition has stayed alive, and today 47 stations have art underground and 53 feature artistic works above ground. More than 150 artists have contributed to decorating the stations with sculptures, mosaics, paintings, 3D installations, carvings, and more.

 “Stockholm was expanding at the time, with many people moving to the suburbs for work,” says Birgitta Muhr, a sculptor who produced art for the Högdalen subway station several years ago.  

“A subway system needed to be created to connect the city, and they wanted art to come to every man and woman. There were lotteries in which you could win a collection of prints from a famous painter for a cheap price, and then they launched a competition to find artists to paint and create sculptures for T-Centralen.”

Last year the Swedish government announced it would be expanding the Stockholm metro system, investing some 25.7 billion kronor ($3.9 billion) in new stations and vehicles.

Specific measures include extending the blue line metro past Kungsträdgården with five new stations: Sofia, Hammarby kanal, Sickla, Saltsjö-Järla, and Nacka Forum. A new stretch will also be built connecting the blue line's planned Sofia station with the Gullmarsplan transit centre on the green line.

North of Stockholm, the blue line will be extended past Akalla and connected to the commuter rail line at Barkaby Station, with a stop at the Barkabystaden district currently under construction in Järfälla along the way.

From Odenplan, a new branch will be built with two new stations, Hagastaden and Arenastaden.

This week the Stockholm Transit Authority (SL) and Stockholm County announced which artists will be creating designs for ten new metro stations, as well as new art at the existing Odenplan and Gullmarsplan stations.

One of the new stations will be the Sofia Station on Södermalm. Artist Thomas Carlsson created a design featuring a large elephant head.

“When I was little I had a cousin who lived in an apartment in Husby,” Carlsson explains. “I was impressed that the apartment building used animal heads instead of numbers for the floors. So my cousin lived on the lion floor.”

Carlsson thought that a similar principle would work well on train platforms, helping visitors to orient themselves.

“It could sound something like this: 'Take the subway from Kungsträdgården towars Nacka Forum, get off at Sofia, and walk towards the elephant sculpture.”

Another station will feature an art project entitled “Skylines”, by Georg Zey, Axel Lieber, Hans Hemmert, and Thomas Schmidt.

“Public art can shift a given context in order to open the gaze up to other aspects of reality,” the artists said in their description of the project.

“The aim is a new characterization of the site and the viewer’s relationship to what he perceives and experiences there. Successful artistic interventions enrich not only the site in general, but also people, who can experience it as an extension of their private sphere.”

Here are some of the other new designs:

ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

SHOW COMMENTS