Fanny Åberg ^{Emerging artist}

Fanny Åberg (b. 1995, Stockholm, Sweden) primarily works with moving image and installation, exploring questions relating to illness, women’s roles, and interpersonal relationships. By positioning her own experiences within historical and societal contexts, Åberg investigates how meanings, patterns, and shifts emerge within these fields.

Åberg holds an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts at Umeå University (Sweden, 2026). Her work “Hålla ihop” / “Holding Together” (2026), presented in the MFA graduation exhibition at Bildmuseet in Umeå, focuses on family caregivers in relation to mental illness and how easily people can fall through the cracks of a fragmented healthcare system.

To better understand contemporary perceptions of mental illness and care, Åberg has previously examined how mentally ill women have been assessed, treated, and portrayed throughout history. Among her earlier works is the performance piece “The Great Hysterical Attack” (2023), presented at the Museum of Women’s History in Umeå, in which she worked with a dancer to reconstruct the hysterical attack as described by physician Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) in the late nineteenth century. As part of her bachelor’s degree, she exhibited the video montage “Act Like You’ve Lost It” (2024), which examines and foregrounds representations of mentally ill women in film history.

While preparing for an exhibition at Sandvikens Konsthall, her research in the city’s municipal archives led to a close reading of letters from the 1880s, which formed the basis for the video installation “Sender: Sigrid, 1888–1889 / Fanny 2017–2021”. The work was shown at Sandvikens Konsthall in autumn and winter 2025. In it, Åberg intertwines her own experiences of mental illness with a historical account of suffering, highlighting how emotions and illness have been expressed, understood, and managed over time.

Åberg has been awarded scholarships and grants from the Royal Skyttean Society, the Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation, the Fredrika Bremer Association Scholarship Foundation, and the Petersenska Hemmet Foundation.