Susanne Svantesson
Shadows and Waves
10/10 - 9/11 2025

Curator: Bahareh Mirhadinezhadfard

“ I work with photography to explore perception and transformation. In my images, clarity gives way to softness, and what once seemed stable begins to shift and dissolve. Recurring motifs such as shadows and waves serve as visual metaphors for the movement of thought and emotion. The installation also includes textile works. “

Galleri CC proudly presents Shadows and Waves, a solo exhibition by artist Susanne Svantesson.
In Shadows and Waves, Susanne Svantesson invites us to enter a space of transformation — where perception becomes movement, and emotion takes form. Working with photography and textiles, she explores the subtle thresholds between clarity and softness, presence and disappearance. Her images unfold in the in-between: moments of transition where stability gives way to drift, and where what we see begins to merge with what we feel.

The recurring motifs of shadows and waves serve as visual and conceptual anchors. A shadow is not merely the absence of light, but the trace of something fleeting — a form of presence that conceals and reveals at once. Waves, on the other hand, carry the rhythm of repetition and return; they are the breath of motion, embodying both turbulence and calm. Together, they shape a visual language of flux, echoing the cyclical nature of thought and emotion.

In this sense, Svantesson’s work resonates with the sensibility found in Swedish poetry. In Nocturne (1916),
Edith Södergran writes:

    Silverskira månskenskväll,
    nattens blåa bölja,
    glittervågor utan tal
    på varandra följa.

(Silvery moonlit evening,
night’s blue wave,
countless glittering waves
follow one another.)

Södergran’s imagery captures the quiet rhythm of perception — how waves and shadows move not only through the landscape but also through the mind. Her poem, like Svantesson’s images, evokes the delicate balance between what is illuminated and what remains in darkness.

Similarly, August Strindberg’s We, Waves (1894) personifies the sea as a restless force of renewal:

We, we waves,
That are rocking the winds to rest —
Green cradles, we waves!   

Strindberg’s waves speak of motion as life itself — of energy that rises, falls, and returns. This cyclical rhythm finds an echo in Svantesson’s practice, where the visual surface becomes a site of constant transformation.

In Shadows and Waves, perception is never static. The photographic image, the woven thread, and the play of light together form a meditation on change — on how emotion moves through us like water, how thought flickers like shadow. Svantesson’s work asks us to dwell in these oscillations, to inhabit the spaces between seeing and sensing, knowing and feeling.

Here, shadows are not darkness, and waves are not water — they are the movement of being itself.


About the artist:
Susanne Svantesson is a visual artist based in Malmö, Sweden. 
www.susannesvantesson.com



Curator: Bahareh Mirhadinezhadfard
Bahareh Mirhadinezhadfard is an artist and curator based in Malmö.

The exhibition is supported by Malmö stad and KULTURRÅDET.
Med stöd av Malmö stad och  KULTURRÅDET



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Photo: Susanne Svantesson