Josefin Bergman (SE)
Någonting måste brinna för att växa
Burning to grow
7/2 - 9/3 2025
Opening:
Friday 7 February: 17:00 – 21:00
Workshop with Collage:
Saturday 1 March: 13:00 - 16:00
Curator: Bahareh Mirhadinezhadfard (IR/SE)
Någonting måste brinna för att växa / Burning to grow, explores the profound themes of transformation and rebirth, drawing inspiration from the ancient legend of the Phoenix. The mythical bird, consumed by flames, rises from its ashes, embodying the cyclical rhythms of life and the enduring spirit of renewal. Through destruction comes the opportunity for growth, and from decay, crisis, accident and trauma, new forms emerge.
The works presented here reflect this process, utilizing materials that carry traces of time, wear, and elemental change. Crushed brick, charred wood, and paper collages evoke the tensions between destruction and creation, decay and regeneration, dependency and entanglement. These materials, themselves marked by processes of transformation, serve as metaphors for the resilience, continuity and plasticity inherent in the natural world and human experience.
The journey begins with a striking installation of crushed roof tiles. Historically shaped by hand and fired from clay drawn from the earth, roof tiles carry the legacy of traditional craftsmanship alongside their practical purpose. Once vital and enduring, the broken fragments of these tiles now symbolize the inevitable passage of time and the potential for reinvention. Their journey - from earth to fire to ruin - mirrors the Phoenix’s cycle of burning and rebirth.
Någonting måste brinna för att växa / Burning to grow invites viewers to reflect on the sublime power of destruction as a catalyst for creation. It draws attention to the limits of human capacity, the ever so fragile and vulnerable existence, acting as a counterbalance to ideals of personal growth and success; when grit, resilience and perseverance are celebrated as forces that push us to keep going when the going gets tough, relentless perseverance can sometimes lead to burnout. Through trauma, an absolute other emerges which has no relationship with the former self - a complete metamorphosis of being, a cauterization of the self.
Text By: Bahareh Mirhadinezhadfard
The exhibition examines the themes of transformation and rebirth, based on the legend of the Phoenix Bird – a symbol of immortality and development. The phoenix burns itself to ashes in order to be resurrected, a process that reflects the cyclical nature of life: being born again and again to grow.
Materials and techniques in the exhibition include crushed tiles, charred wood and paper collage, all of which reflect ideas of decay and renewal.
The first thing you encounter when you enter the gallery is an installation consisting of crushed roof tiles.
The tiles in the installation are reminiscent of ruins – buildings that have fallen into disrepair through damage and lack of maintenance. The idea is reinforced by thoughts around urban development, where the holes of clay pits, which are created when making bricks and tiles, reflect the buildings they create. This is a parallel to the book Invisible Cities (1972) by Italo Calvino. A novel in which an emissary entertains his emperor with stories of cities he has visited during his travels in the emperor's kingdom. The imagery from his stories slide together, and the contours dissolve. Is it perhaps ultimately only one place that the emissary has told his emperor about?
On my way into town, I often think of the holes that are being made when clay is dug up to be shaped into bricks and tiles, and that are then being shaped into our cities. I build castles in the sky and wonder if the holes have the same shapes as the houses, but in a negative formation?
On the wall to the right of the room hangs two works made in collage. The collages are composed of paper or shards that bear traces of bare homes and sweet drinks.
Images have been dissected to be patched together into a new understanding of the flow of information that the brain is constantly being exposed to.
Further into the gallery in the second room we meet two sculptures placed in the middle of the room. The sculptures consist of two pieces of furniture, a corner cabinet and a side tableBoth pieces of furniture are black and processed in a form of charring.
Burning and charring wooden surfaces has a long tradition in Sweden and the Nordic countries to make the wood resistant to rot and mold growth. Among several things, fence posts and bridge piles. In Japan, where this technique is called Yakisugi, wood has been burned for hundreds of years, mainly for house facades, where the fire-resistant quality of the charred surface is sought after.
In Europe and the United States, this technology made itself visible in the early 2000s as a trend and today it is a recurring feature in everything from public buildings to villas and interiors.
At one end of the Yakisugi (Shou Sugi Ban) spectrum we have Wabi sabi, a Japanese philosophy that emphasizes the beauty of the changing and imperfect. Allowing the stresses of nature to leave its mark on the expression is common in Japan, where facades are left untreated for decades. Over time, the outer burnt layers peel away and expose the lighter wood. How long this takes depends entirely on the building's geographical location, construction and burning process.
Yakisugi, to me, symbolizes perseverance and boldness, when you dare to expose the surface to something that could destroy it. This in turn brings my thoughts to controlled forest fire where the fire creates environments so that competitive insects, vascular plants, fungi and mosses can establish themselves. Throughout history, fire has also exerted a strong selection pressure, which has meant the emergence of pyrophilic organisms, species that are dependent on fire.
There, the fire-saturated landscape becomes a biotope, a home for thousands of insects, fungi, organisms and plants. Some 40 insect species in Sweden - beetles, skink beetles, flies and butterflies - are today known to be directly dependent on fire. Hundreds more are benefited by fire. They have different adaptations to smoke, heat and fire and most of the fire-dependent insects require burnt forest. They develop in burnt wood (black fire beetle - Melanophila acuminata ) or burnt ground (small fire runner - Sericoda quadripunctata). Fire insects are competitive and newly burned forest therefore offers a suitable environment to colonize.
The forest fire is a landscape that, after a seemingly huge disaster, lies naked, black and burnt. But what was recently a smoking desert is already recovering. Now sprouts verdant hope. In the middle of the charred and broken, new life starts up. Rosebay willowherb cover the ground in forgiving red lakes, raspberries, ferns, D.flexuosa and other grasses spread.
Text by: Josefin Bergman
Josefin Bergman, b. 1985, graduated from Umeå Art Academy in 2013. Since then, she has exhibited in several group exhibitions such as Färgfabriken in Stockholm, Malmö Konsthall and Bildmuseet in Umeå.
Bergman uses everyday objects and modest materials where she touches on topics such as relationships and communication. Subjective memories and experiences are also allowed to have a prominent role in the works. She works freely between sculpture and collage, which are often combined into larger spatial installations.
Bahareh Mirhadinezhadfard is an artist and curator who lives and works in Malmö.
The exhibition is supported by Malmö stad, KULTURRÅDET and Malmö Återbyggdepå