Carolina Falkholt

If anybody were to write an art and architecture history of Stockholm during the 2010s, their account would be less than accurate if it left out the sapphire-blue, shimmering, erect penis she painted on Kronobergsväggen on Kungsholmen. Although it has been painted over now, in its day, it was every bit as obvious and real as the spire of the Riddarholmen Church, and it remains carved into many people’s memories as a surprising, powerful, sometimes disarming, and sometimes provocative, addition to the cityscape. Its jubilant, shameless, outrageous obscenity and sparkle have made it a part of our shared history.

How could she? How did she have the nerve? For Carolina Falkholt, though, it doesn’t come down to nerve: it comes down to necessity. Deep within, behind the big, made-up eyes and the wild hair, there is a force that seems to be connected to the big bang, the explosive power shared by all living things. This exhibition at CFHILL marks the first of a series of works she will be showing after having spent some time away from the public eye. The energy, with the glowing ejections of blue, pink, and red, with a fine-meshed, calming web covering it, is familiar from her monumental murals. However, one senses that there is something new here, something more deliberate and questing.

The isolation of the studio, and the inherent slowness and intimacy of paper, as opposed to the public, large spaces that spray paint demands, have brought out new dimensions of Carolina Falkholt’s art. Thoughtful, lyrical mental webs, working their way through the fibres, bit by bit, like some pedantic geographer methodically charting unknown lands, or a shaman’s repetitive, ritual use of symbols for communicating with the voices of spirits. A belly button, a hand, transitions into a continent, the coastline thinning to a veil, almost disappearing into the white. Other sections form opaque land masses made of feathers, glistening church windows, and rough scales.

What is this land that grows so slowly, organically heaving itself across the image? I find no obvious references or connections to the world of graffiti, which is where Carolina Falkholt started out. My mind goes instead to another Swedish artist who never quite felt at home in Sweden, and sought the freedom he needed in New York: Öyvind Fahlström (1928–1976). His iconographically dense, mysterious Ade-Ledic-Nander (1955) seems like it could be a sibling of sorts to Carolina Falkholt’s mental maps. These semi-representative, anthropomorphous islands with their fragmented coastlines tell stories that cannot be communicated in any existing language. They are like concrete, physical abstractions in a way. They don’t relate to anything, but they throb with life. Just like Fahlström, Carolina Falkholt takes a keen interest in symbols, forms, languages, and the organic-political domain. A new grammar for a new, more precise description of reality. While Fahlström sought to trace the geopolitical power relations, Caroline Falkholt follows those subterranean paths that touch on subjects like domestic violence, rage, and payback in the sacred name of sexuality. Because of this, she has far more in common with earlier, pioneering performance artists from the second wave of feminism, like Yayoi Kusama’s powerful enactments in which she used her own body to experiment with the healing power of repetition, or the bold vulnerability of Hanna Wilkes’s vaginas sculpted from chewing gum, or, perhaps most of all, Carolee Schneemann’s shamanistic poetry readings, during which she produces rolls of paper from her body. Another relevant reference that comes to mind when viewing Carolina Falkholt’s most recent works is the watercolour paintings of Louise Bourgeois, in which body parts form desolate landscapes.

Carolina Falkholt grew up in Dals Långed in Dalsland, where her parents spent all their time working on their restaurant. She was expected to help out early on–one of her responsibilities was exterminating flies! The restaurant was located near a farm. Reading about her life in articles and interviews–of which there are a fair number by now–reveals the story a solitary child who found herself torn between two extremes: on the one hand, the high-achieving horseback rider, and on the other hand, the girl who ventures into the night to join the criminals who “bomb” concrete surfaces, using metal cans with insect-like nozzles to defy the social contract. Young men, with very few exceptions. The inner drive and necessity of spraying and painting, of living outside the law, made Carolina Falkholt’s rise to fame and admiration inevitable, and has helped her strike a balance that’s entirely her own for her life as an artist. She calls this method “grafitta”. Today, Carolina Falkholt enjoys a unique position in the world of art: she is seen by all, loved, enraged, and knows no fear. If art, then, is a matter of life and death, why should there be thresholds between what’s inside and what’s outside? How could a veiny, bulging, locked-and-loaded azure blue cock that’s several meters high be anything but a celebration of vindictive life force? Encountering this artist is, ultimately, to encounter the fundamental terms of art. All or nothing. And, coupled with that, a readiness to venture into uncharted territories.

Carolina Falkholt
in conversation with Paulina Sokolow

You’ve been working on a large painting this summer. What’s it about?
— it’s about doubling down and fighting back. It’s about having a nimble imagination, and being able to stretch out, in time, and avoid adopting the role of woman as dictated by society, which restricts your freedom to possess your own language. It’s about taking the time to process powerful emotions and use them to forge a protective barrier around yourself, which can shield you from the requirement that you be like everybody else.

Could you tell us how your most recent pieces developed?
— Well, I wrote a poem, as a transcription of a painting, for people who can’t see. The details of the image are translated into text, and that becomes a sound art piece.

Witches are a recurring theme in your titles and subjects. Which qualities and properties attracted you to this mythical figure?
— I’m thinking here of the stigma of mental health issues, and I want to remind everyone that we live in a country where it used to be fully legal to have women who didn’t conform to norms executed by accusing them of witchcraft.

Can you describe how it feels to press down on the spray can tip and see the paint come out?
— It depends on the situation I’m in. However, if I have a can of black spider paint and a wall of raw concrete, I could make any words at all seem significant.

The secondary school you attended was a Waldorf school, right?
— It was good for me to go to a Waldorf school. I had the freedom to make graffiti paintings during school hours, and they gave me hypnotic treatments when I would arrive all drowsy after painting all night. They gave me special education in crafts. It was wonderful. They really seemed to get what I was up to and wanted to do. First, I attended primary school in Dalsland, and then I went to an elite secondary school for athletes in Skåne, where I specialised in dressage and horses. While I was there, I realised that what I really wanted to do was make art. I arrived at this conclusion in part because the only other thing I enjoyed doing was drawing, and in part because my art teacher was the only teacher at the school who appreciated my work. The fact that elite horse riding is such an expensive thing to do played into it, too. You need to be riding incredibly expensive horses to even have a chance. So, I put all that aside and took up art instead: graffiti, activism, text, poetry, dance, theatre, and music.

I’m impressed that you figured out what to do with your life so early on. Have you ever reflected on that?
— I became aware, early on, that art is a matter of life and death, and I have always known that my own true language is drawing.

Graffiti has become increasingly commercialised lately. How do you feel about that? Municipal public art projects carried out in collaboration with property developers involve their own unique sets of demands for mural paintings, and the artists end up quite restricted…
— In a democratic society, artists and creators should always be able to express themselves freely, without having to adapt their messages to the powers-that-be or whatever ideals happen to be predominant at the time. However, we can see how politicians are trying to influence the art that’s being shown in our public spaces, and as a result, walls and sites in our cities, villages, and towns have been plastered with some rather blatantly sell-out art. If we fail to make it clear enough that we can’t let politics dictate the contents of art and culture, the often-strained financial realities of the creators will inevitably nudge them towards conforming with whatever they believe the political power structure favours.

Where do you reckon you fit into all of this?
— My art is a language that resists oppressive norms. It will always have its own discourse.

Your artistic practice seems to have a rather strong shamanistic aspect.
— I’ve never been told that before, but I think it could be true. In that case, my “spirit world” would be my own unconscious.

Your murals seem to stir up record-breaking levels of emotion –I’m thinking specifically of the red and blue cocks in New York and Stockholm, respectively, and all the swollen vaginas.
— Stirring up record-breaking levels of emotion through art sounds just fine to me. I want to carry on doing that. When I painted the cock in New York (NO TIME 4 BALL$$, mural painted on a building on Broome Street, 2017), people nearby were laughing and cheering and hollering and jeering. I ended up feeling so energised by it all that I decided in the moment to make it fully realistic. I originally intended to make it look like more of a sketch, but I ended up creating a full-on, naturalistic erection.

The next year, you made a companion piece for that red cock, in Stockholm, too.
— I wanted to see that the art could stand alone. The piece is titled How to Be Esoteric in the Patriarchy.

Is it a self-portrait?
— Well, that’s never been suggested to me before. Could you explain what you mean?

Well, it’s just as you say: how can anyone be esoteric in the midst of the patriarchy? The interesting part isn’t the male appendage as such, but its role as a symbol for something unwavering, unstoppable, powerful, and uninhibited. That’s what we should be conquering. I don’t think I differentiate between the pussies and cocks in your works–they represent a primal, untameable force that you identify with very strongly, or at a minimum serves as the motivating force in your art, as I see it. You’ve even coined a term for it, grafitta.
— I became feministically aware when I had children. That’s when I created grafitta, as a kind of pathway between the art institutions and the streets. I found the macho culture and the strict rules of graffiti culture, and the constant identity struggle it involves, disturbing. And once I had children, I couldn’t very well risk getting sent to prison for making graffiti. I had to breastfeed! So, I needed a new name and a new method for my practice. One result of this was an exhibition I made in 2007 at Göteborgs konsthall, which was titled Grafitta. However, it’s the aesthetics of the law itself that matter when it comes to artists’ languages in public spaces. Kukitti or grafitta.

Is writing poetry something you’ve only just started doing?
— I’ve always written. At times, I write exclusively in rhyme. When I’m inspired, my thoughts emerge as perfect sentences, like musical fragments. I hear the melodies, and I record the lyrics for them.

You’ve lived in New York on and off over the years. What effect has that had on you, do you think?
— I love being there.  Now, I have a temporary studio at Nordstan in Gothenburg, so it feels a bit like New York, being in such a busy, central place. I like that. It feels urban.

So, about feminism, is there a message you’d like to get across on that subject?
— Everything I have to say about feminism is there to be found in my art, for anybody who wishes to see it.

Your daughter is 18 years old now. What do you think when you see her and think back on your own life?
— Without getting my daughter immediately involved in this, I think about when I was her age, and started making graffiti. How it was such an important, formative time, that came to determine so much of my future.

Have you discovered any new aspects of your process while you’ve been working on this exhibition?
— The work has brought me closer to my own artistic expression. I’ve always stayed close to my own creative work, but this has given me a heightened awareness, particularly of my poetry and my language. I feel like I’ve grown more accustomed to those processes. I use art as a way of mastering my life, as it is mostly unmanageable, even to the point of paralysis. Art allows me to control and direct my emotional chaos, and the images help me navigate that world.

How do you feel about this change in technique, going from large-scale murals to more intimate practices?
— I’ve been working on the exhibition since December, and my process has involved taking a rather free approach to my techniques, drawings, and paintings, and choosing subjects and worlds in the moment, allowing my attempts to understand what I am doing to guide me. Normalising the artistic way of life.

So, how does it feel?
— I’m beginning to feel at home in the smaller format now, and I can adapt my idiom to it and feel that it works. Also, going from public murals to this has given me the leeway to introduce greater complexity, the freedom to not be too easily decoded. This working method has also involved me more deeply in my writing. It has brought about a period when I’ve enjoyed strong flow, and a powerful drive to continue my search.

Could you tell us something about the title of the exhibition, 'Du får dansa i min park' [You get to dance in my park]?
— It’s about being open and generous–it expresses the fact that I feel ready to face my audience. The title is taken from a song lyric, which actually continues like this: “Du får dansa i min park, jag är fitta och knark” [You get to dance in my park, I’m all pussy and drugs.].