Exhibitions: Christina Pettersson
Note: Christina Pettersson’s’ exhibition at Locust Projects, scheduled to open April 3, was postponed due to COVID-19. It has been rescheduled to open on July 8, 2020, by appointment only. Given the schedule change it has been been reconfigured for the 1,500 square foot Main Gallery.
Behind-the-Scenes: Christina Pettersson: In the Pines
“A voracious reader of local history, as well as an avid naturalist, birder, explorer and wild thing, I am most alive when I am inside the scenery, tramping the landscape barefoot and muddy...I want to be a storyteller. I want to believe that life is still wild.” — Christina Pettersson
Christina Pettersson has been working for the last year on a site-specific project commissioned by Locust Projects. Titled In the Pines, the artist plans to transform the Main Gallery into a cemetery populated by early South Florida figures to which the artist is drawn, each also deeply connected to the land and it’s long and often forgotten history.
The project Pettersson has been working on for Locust Projects that was originally scheduled to open on April 3, 2020 will serve as a lasting and familiar impression of the collective past. The cemetery will invite the viewer to contemplate historical narratives while also functioning as a memorial commemorating the individual life and its significance through sculpture, video, and drawing.
“CHRISTINA PETTERSSON wants you under her spell...As you’re drawn ever deeper into the tangled symphony of her deft pencil strokes, you are drenched in Gothic whimsy and beguiled by the gentle monster of an imagination overgrown with carnival and myth. Pettersson is bewitched by the songs of forgotten ghosts, by the incomprehensible decadence of her beloved South. How could you resist her mayhem?” — Susanna Sonnenberg, 2014
Photo: Fury of the Swamp, Alligator, 2017
The project expands on an artistic career dedicated to exploring resurrection and savage demise on a grand scale once reserved for history painting. Her drawings, sculptures, and most recently performances, reference classic mythology and literature, revealing a deep allegiance to the wilderness of a bygone era, the sorcery of the night, and the experience of a world in decline. It is a stage materialized from the often brutal but beautiful Everglades of her hometown, which she has spent a lifetime exploring.
In the Pines celebrates South Florida’s history by mourning what has been lost while also taking back the cemetery for the living. A sense of community is strengthened by the act of honoring the dead and exploring their forgotten history.
The installation echoes the sentiments of Pettersson’s annual birthday celebration, which she spends at the Miami City Cemetery every May. Before COVID-19, she had planned to invite the public to join her at the cemetery this year for fried chicken and champagne, as she did in 2014 in conjunction with her show at Primary Projects. Fortunately, we were still able to celebrate virtually with Christina on May 26 this year, thank you to all who joined us!
taphophile
Noun (plural taphophiles)
● A person who is interested in cemeteries, funerals and gravestones
Origin Ancient Greek τάφος (taphos, “funeral rites”, “burial”, “funeral”, “wake”; “tomb”, “grave”) + English -phile
Tombstone tourist (otherwise known as a "cemetery enthusiast", "cemetery tourist", "grave hunter", "graver", or "taphophile") describes an individual who has a passion for and enjoyment of cemeteries, epitaphs, gravestone rubbing, photography, art, and history of (famous) deaths.
Image: John Alfred Ball’s grave at Miami City Cemetery
“I started celebrating my birthday at the grave of John Alfred Ball — whom I share a birthday with — about eight years ago," Pettersson says. "...I'm really looking forward to sharing it with the public this year, especially since it falls on Memorial Day, when people would traditionally visit cemeteries to decorate the graves of soldiers and picnic and visit family." — Christina Pettersson in the Miami New Times, 2014 on her public program inviting Miami to join her for a traditional fried chicken and champagne feast at the historic Miami City Cemetery.
Christina Pettersson: In the Pines is commissioned by Locust Projects as part of its annual Open Call for proposals.
Day four.
Conditions in the Glades are from a scientific perspective interesting and from a human perspective bad.
Yet as long as some idiot has determined to go beyond pitching a tent and isn't immediately bear mauled, said idiot will nail a flag and claim its virtue. The history of the Glades reads like a syllabus of complete insanity: "How to be eaten alive by tiny vampires" " How to be eaten alive by reptilian dinosaurs” "How to be eaten alive by madness itself".
Day six.
There are two kinds of flatness I now realize: the bright infinity of the Everglades, and the other; death, suburbia.
A Venetian painting and the one ironed out until all the color desiccates and dies, turned into vectors and grids.
Lucid versus lurid, song versus bone.
Christina Pettersson - excerpt from Journal entries from the Everglades, December 2015. Typed on a 1955 Smith-Corona manual typewriter, gray clipper with green keys. Read more here.
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Christina Pettersson has lived in Miami, FL most of her life. Thus her last two solo exhibitions, in Everglades National Park and at the historic Deering Estate on Biscayne Bay, reflect her lifelong passions in her hometown. Recent shows include the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Girls Club, Fort Lauderdale, the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, FL, Launch F18, New York, NY. She has exhibited at other museums, particularly in the South, such as the Birmingham Museum of Art, AL, Columbus Museum of Art, GA, Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, Wiregrass Museum of Art, AL, and the Naples Museum of Art, FL. She has received the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship thrice, the largest regionally sponsored grant in the US. She received a Fulbright Grant to return to Sweden in 2000, attending the Valand School of Fine Arts in Gothenburg. She is the recipient of a 2019 Creator Award Ellie’s Grant from Oolite Arts and currently has a studio at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Wynwood.
Pettersson has attended residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, The Studios of Key West, Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Program under Inka Essenhigh, and a year long program at the Deering Estate. Taking her to remote and historic places, they have a profound effect on her work. Most influentially she spent a month inside Everglades National Park under the AIRIE residency program in 2015. This residency solidified her desire to focus her artwork on the combination of her local environment, history and community outreach. She has also curated and staged group performances and public programming throughout her native South Florida. In conjunction with exhibitions and organizations such as AIRIE, Girls Club, and various historical entities she collaborates to bring these themes to life in the community- thru walking and bus tours of neighborhoods, cemeteries and the local environment, guest lectures, workshops, book clubs, even shadow puppet performances. These events have allowed Pettersson’s work to become a true engagement with the community, dissolving boundaries, utilizing the talents of a variety of people and organizations with limited resources, and educating and delighting by innovative means.
View the artist’s full CV here.
Image: Artist as the painting at Haunted Mansion in Disneyworld
LEARN MORE ABOUT CHRISTINA PETTERSSON:
WATCH: Interview on ARTNET TV:
“[My work is] interested in restoring a mythic and epic dimension to life, a sense of awe and reverence for the world”
WATCH: Performance - A Little Swamp Romance
“Join Alma Dance Theatre and Christina Pettersson for a vaudeville-esque extravaganza using shadow puppetry, slide projection, live dance, live narration, and musical accompaniment by Shira Abernale in this charming example of magical-realism.”
WATCH: Performance - Along the Shadow of the River presented by Girls’ Club
A multi-disciplinary public performance set along the banks of the historic New River, the performance brings together local musicians, dancers, opera singers and artists to embody historic female figures who have made integral contributions to the founding and history of Fort Lauderdale.
Locust Projects 2020-2021 exhibitions and programming are made possible with support from: The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, The Children's Trust; Berkowitz Contemporary Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Grant; Hillsdale Fund; the Albert and Jane Nahmad Family Foundation; VIA Art Fund | Wagner Incubator Grant; Funding Arts Network; The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at The Miami Foundation; Susan and Richard Arregui; Kirk Foundation; Miami Salon Group; Scott Hodes; Jones Day; Community Recovery Fund at The Miami Foundation and the Wege Foundation; and the donors to the Still Making Art Happen Campaign and Locust Projects Exhibitionist members.