Photo: Josefine Laul
A Game of Contrarieties
By: xxx Published: d/m/Y
Photo: Josefine Laul
Josefin Zachrisson grew up in Söderhamn, a small town along the north coast of Sweden. She did her preparatory art and design studies in Hällefors, an even smaller town. 2016 Josefin moved to Stockholm to begin her BFA at Beckmans College of Design and she debuted with her first exhibition in Milan at Fourisalone 2019.
Josefin founded the art and design collective Swedish Girls together with 3 other artists, Mira Bergh, Matilda Ellow and Julia Jondell, whom she all graduated together with in 2019. The collective came to exist because they all wanted to create a context and support system for their joint and individual practices.
What is it like being based in Sweden as an emerging designer and artist today?
I position myself in a borderland of art and design and can find it hard to navigate between the art scene and the design scene in Sweden, it’s much more fluid in other places. This comes with both difficulties and possibilities as an emerging designer and artist. My life has felt made up since we started Swedish Girls but since I’m creating my own circumstances I guess that’s a legitimate feeling.
Seats at Super Salone in Milan September 2021
Photo Courtesy of Josefin Zachrisson
Seats at Super Salone in Milan September 2021
Photo Courtesy of Josefin Zachrisson
Your first international appearance was Seats, what is Seats?
Seats is a furniture concept, a system of sculptural, social and modular seating objects.
Another one of my personal favorites of yours is Mess, what makes Mess a mess?
It’s the process of making it: the emotional work behind the concept, the intuitive and experimental work together with the glassblowers and the result in its appearance and how the viewer receives it.
You like to play with contrarieties, Seats look soft but are made of steel, Body Fluid is a motion but a frozen one, and Trash is exactly the opposite. Why do you think that is?
That’s a very nice observation! Contrarieties is something I work with a lot, both consciously and unconsciously. I like to play with context in my work and my concepts often find their ways through questioning why things are and look the way they do.
Do you feel the need to push your work forward or what is forward to you?
I’m a curious person and this reflects in my work. My life and my work is really morphed together at the moment so simply wanting to develop as a person pushes me forward as an artist and vice versa.
What is beauty?
Beauty is subjective and I’m intrigued by whatever makes me feel something and the feeling doesn’t have to be connected to the appearance of an art work.
Seats at Super Salone in Milan September 2021
Photo Courtesy of Josefin Zachrisson