Annika Larsson

BROOKLYN,
USA

ANNIKA LARSSON
Born 1972 in Stockholm, Sweden
Lives and works in New York

Education:
1995 - 2000 MASTER OF FINE ARTS, The Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm

Feminist Artist Statement

“...AL: To go back in time the first images that I cut out and saved, images that I did not necessarily consider my work, but that I found interesting, they were of men in uniforms, the male uniform shirt, and images often just displaying the male neck. For me those images were very erotic although on the websites and magazines where I found them they were meant to send more neutral signals. So a lot of my early work was actually only about my erotic feelings towards these images. And I was a bit shocked when I started to show my work, when suddenly there was a discussion about masculine power. I think that if I were a man my work would have been discussed as homoerotic or even a bit underground. But because I was a woman I felt very underground or at least I felt very different.

RJ: It was as if the critics had hijacked your art re-rigging the meaning you intended? But critics are permitted that, no?

AL: They made it mainstream . . . and they began talking about businessmen and I was like . . . what businessmen? . . . These are not businessmen ... they are very extreme characters . . . and super sexualized. I was very surprised . . . but maybe I wasn’t that surprised because I was also aware of the power that these images expressed . . . so a paradox again. This work was a way for me to understand how to exaggerate the power of an image by having a man there . . . or by using conventions in society and allowing the erotic gaze to be much more about erotic power than about a woman watching men, or the feminine gaze. In the end, it was a very personal point of view. And since my work has never been about feminism, I wanted to go beyond that. I didn’t want to spend my life asking for permission to play with these things . . . I wanted to play with them. ...”

Extract from a conversation between Ronald Jones and Annika Larsson, included in an essay by Ronald Jones in the catalouge ANNIKA LARSSON, STEREOTYPE. Published by Dunkers Kulturhus & Revolver ISBN 978-91-974769-7-3