björnsonova

Work exhibited in the Trade Fair Palace:

Every morning is the morning I wanted to wake up earlier / 2024 / site-specific installation, reading environment / curtains (textile collage), carpet with frame structure (wood, cardboard), objects (wood, cardboard), reading lamps, sculptures, books, WHOAREU cards / courtesy of the artist

* Commissioned by the Biennale Matter of Art Prague.

Some people think björnsonova is a witch who can cast spells and predict the future. Others think she is a feminist who fights against patriarchy and male domination and goes to raves. She is not happy with society. That is why she hangs out with people who are different, like poets, vampires, and queers. She learns from them about friendship, survival, and protests. Which gossip have you heard? björnsonova is an artistic and performance collective that creates maps for the future, brings up ideas about the present, and produces events. She is interested in sexuality, women’s bodies, daydreaming, cute and scary images of popular culture. She hosts a reading group of poetry, fiction and essays for the night readers, where one can share very secret dreams, anxious thoughts and political strategies. For the Matter of Art Biennale, björnsonova was invited to think about the ways our bodies as workers and non-workers change shape. It looks as if many things that we learn at school, at work, and at state institutions are wrong. They damage us, make our lives boring and stressful, they take away our joy. björnsonova invites us to take a break from our daily life and explore the unknown world of magic, feminism, and creativity in a comfortable environment. She has prepared a space to lie down, read, rest, and dive into the world of the unknown.

björnsonova is a project, a fictional character, a community, and a dancing multi-body with roots and connections spread across time, places, and art forms. This hybrid subjectivity recycles, multiplies, and inverts practices, methods, objects, texts, and bodies with each event that takes place in her name.

björnsonova was founded in 2015. It is an artistic and interdisciplinary platform for experimentation, research, and sharing, in which a number of artists from Prague, Košice, Berlin, Brussels, and Belgrade participate simultaneously. björnsonova is also a fictional character, a mystery, a monster, a teenager, a witch with an ever-changing form. Her body is a metaphor for the very functioning and dynamics of the platform, where all parts of the whole are inseparable from each other, while forming their own collective environments. The artists and curators link their practices to explore the relationship between the body and its environment and, through various anti-strategies, encourage ideas about how this relationship can change. In the realm of art projects, björnsonova has been intensively involved in reading clubs and linking theory to practice since its inception.

björnsonova completed artist residencies in Prague in 2024, as part of the Biennale Matter of Art 2024, which was funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.