#linneahansander

FASE (Barcelona) 16.09 – 28.10 2023 Supported by l’Ajuntament de L’Hospitalet and Konstnärsnämden

📸 Mercedes Pimiento

“It feels like I’m tied to that moment with a rubber band”. The video work through which we enter Linnea Hansander’s exhibition stars a group of puppets. United by a common loss, they are undergoing a process of collective mourning, dealing with the pain as best as they can. At times they resort to Guns N’ Roses songs, at others they share their nightmares. When they are not pondering the meaning of death, they build tiny models recreating old memories. One of the puppets seems to be convinced that books hold the answer, quoting John Berger in order to pitch an idea to the group: what if we are all part of the great collective of the dead? Could we get rid of time, of the feeling that the past has passed and that what is to come is yet to come? What if love is trying to teach us that nothing ever ends, that it is always already too late?

With See You in Heaven Hansander brings us closer to the pleasures and fears that come with being able to imagine eternity, and she does it with humor, making use of pop music and playfulness. Dividing the space into different stations, the installation stages a temporal collapse of sorts by proposing a series of subtle rituals (melting into each other's eyes with Elton John, a time traveling session hosted by a sofa, putting on a pair of extra arms). The last station is dedicated to a group performance called Repeat Karaoke, where Hansander invites us to choose between a single song. While the artist has previously selected classics like ‘Heaven’ (Bryan Adams) or ‘Without You’ (Mariah Carey), this time the performance has been adapted to the local context. For the opening of the exhibition Hansander will sing ‘Puede Ser’, by El Canto del Loco and Amaia Montero, together with us (over and over again).

See You in Heaven emerges from a collaboration between FASE, the platform Playlist Curada and the collective Fuxia 2. The installation is accompanied by a mixtape made up of some songs compiled along the way. A playlist that is also a keepsake of an exhibition which momentarily tied Barcelona, Malmö, Stockholm and Buenos Aires together with a rubber band. Or perhaps a proposal to imagine future rituals.