Charlotte Gyllenhammar

Biography

Charlotte Gyllenhammar’s work explores power, vulnerability, and identity. Her breakthrough came in 1993 with the monumental public installation Dö för dig (Die for you) – a 120-year-old oak tree suspended upside down in the heart of Stockholm. Since then, Gyllenhammar has produced work in several disciplines, including video, photography, and installation, but has truly excelled in the sculptural medium. She often revisits the same characters and motifs in her work, especially the child clad in a protective armour of overalls or the woman weighed down by layers of skirts and furs. While investigating deeply personal and intimate themes, Gyllenhammar will often, as with her debut, literally turn these on their heads to force a new perspective onto the viewer.

Gyllenhammar studied at the Royal College of Art in London and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Her public commissions include memorials to Raoul Wallenberg and Dag Hammarskjöld, the sculpture Meteorite in Lund, and the fountains &child and Mother in Malmö. Gyllenhammar’s works have been presented at the Venice Biennale, UNESCO and in exhibitions all over the world, including Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Spain), National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC (USA), and BIWAKO Biennale (Japan). Her work is represented in several important Nordic and international institutions, including Moderna Museet, KIASMA, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. In 2022, she presented the solo exhibition Croiser/Korsa at Prince Eugen Waldemarsudde and in 2023 she was the first Swedish artist to unveil a work for the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation sculpture park on Royal Djurgården in Stockholm.

In September 2023, on the 30th jubilee of Dö för Dig, a new version of the artwork was installed at the same location in a collaboration between the artist, the Public Art Agency and Stockholm Art.