Adam Gidlund ^{Emerging artist}

Artist's country of origin: Sweden

Adam Gidlund (b. 1991) is a Swedish visual artist whose work spans video, photography, animation, and installation. Rooted in a performative and conceptual practice, Gidlund’s art interrogates the construction of identity, the aesthetics of digital culture, and the emotional residue of contemporary society. Since 2016, his work has explored queerness, the human condition, and the politics of visibility—often through self-staged performances and layered symbolism. Early works engaged with photographic archetypes, reclaiming and queering historical motifs. Over time, Gidlund’s practice has transitioned into digital and screen-based formats, incorporating green morphsuits, AI-generated visuals, synthetic voices, and animated environments. These elements serve as metaphors for erasure, transformation, and the fragility of personhood in an algorithmic world.

Gidlund’s recent projects—such as Dandy Issues, Blue Screen of Death, and The Rot—critically examine the role of artificial intelligence, online surveillance, digital decay, and late-capitalist absurdity. Through parody, melancholy, and defamiliarization, his work questions societal norms, and the commodification of identity in a post-truth, screen-dominated era. Recurring themes include hiding and revealing, absurd humor, and the aesthetics of malfunction. Gidlund often stages his digital personas in broken or decaying environments—evoking metaphors of glitch, rot, and obsolescence. His use of queerness is not only thematic but methodological, queering traditional narratives and media formats to reflect instability, multiplicity, and non-normative futures.

In 2018, he received a project grant from Ale Municipality, which led to his first solo exhibition Fun and Games at Repslagarmuseet in Älvängen. This body of work marked a turning point in his practice, using a clown-like alter ego and low-fi digital performances to subvert the sanitized logic of social media feeds.

His photographic work The Aristocrat was exhibited at Galleri Backlund in Gothenburg in 2022, further expanding his investigation into veiled identities, privilege, and the theatricality of digital presence. In 2023, his piece The Professional was selected for inclusion in the digital program Vacations in the Subconscious, curated by The New Museum of Networked Art—highlighting his engagement with global digital discourse and experimental moving image.