Image: Mikael Lundgren, MIKAEL LUNDGREN UMEA; Mikael Lundgren; Bild i Norr, Umeå, Sweden tel: +46 (0)70-647 49 58, www.bildinorr.se Bildmuseets har distributionsrätt som pressbilder., MIKAEL LUNDGREN UMEA, Bild i Norr

I CUT ACROSS THE STREAM

For the last two years, the master’s degree students at Umeå Academy of Fine Arts have been working in the studios and workshops overlooking the Umeälven River: a powerful torrent in the summer, an iced-over, wide-open canvas during the long, semi-Arctic winter.

Alongside the Academy’s teaching faculty, visiting international artists, curators and theoreticians, the students have negotiated their artistic trajectories across many streams of thought and gesture. In this year’s MA graduation exhibition at Bildmuseet, the graduating students invite you to join them in cutting across.

How do you stand back from the flood of today’s information, quietly yet accurately observing the currents of the past and the present, to determine where to cut across the stream, however violent the currents may be? What may be holding you captive on this side of the river, and what horizons do you imagine and discover coming into being when you step out of the boat, or off the known shores, into the waves and an open horizon?

This year’s MFA degree show from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, Umeå University, presents works by Anna Zingmark, Eric Seppas, Emie // Eva-Marie Elg, Fredrik Zanichelli, Gideon Eillert, Jo Öqvist, Kiril Prikazcik, Linn Byrkjeland, Noa Costas Martín, Oliver Bugge, Rebecca Sharp och Therése Hurtig.

Kristina Buch
Artist and Professor at Umeå Academy of Fine Arts.
Principal supervisor of the 2023 MFA graduating cohort.