In 2021-2022, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm presented an extensive mid-career retrospective of her work, accompanied by a catalogue, which has now travelled to the Moderna Museet in Malmö.
Recurring themes in Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff’s works are patriarchal structures, global capitalism, psychoanalytic theories and her deep interest in the photographic image itself. Her interest also extends to the transition from analogue to digital photography, examining the very medium of photography and its tools of the trade. She currently employs techniques such as UV-print on acrylic glass, oil paint, fine art prints and enamels.
Her new works on display at the gallery stem from a series of images initiated in 2020 with the title: The Hole is a Noun. Reflecting the contradictory categorisation of an object defined by its absence, the images are based on found photographs from private photo albums and news archives. The subject matter is now being completed with the addition of new images, all relating to the subject. Crotch Blowout and the work that lends its title to the exhibition, The Pink Drill, deals with unwanted holes versus a specific hole that requires a lot of energy and calculations to create.
The definition of a hole is usually referred to as an opening or recess in a specific material and it is a philosophical question of whether a hole really exists. That the word hole, as the title of the series states, belongs to the word class nouns is a way of pointing out the absurdity that something that may not exist can be included in a classification system. Of course, the holes or the active creation of holes in the images can be seen as a metaphor. In an allegorical way the images, which are originally from different eras and contexts, function as a surface onto which the viewer can project the possible meanings of a hole.
Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff represented Sweden in the Venice Biennale of 1999 and her work was the subject of another large mid-career retrospective: Grand Theory Hotel at Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg in 2016.
