Malin Hedlin Hayden.
Malin Hedlin Hayden.

About the lecture

Humor and surprise: modes of criticality in Swedish Contemporary Art 

The lecture will focus on particular strategies of criticality employed in artistic practices. Criticality is a rather dominant trajectory of Western contemporary art, and which partly stems from not only new technologies, but from artistic practices that aim beyond both the market and the contemplative, autonomous artwork. 

In a context of art production that questions, investigates, and problematizes socio-cultural aspects (like for example gender, labor, and power) interventions and relational aesthetics have been key to rethinking what, when, and where art is hence also the status of the beholder. By spotlighting humor and surprise as both modes and effects, with examples from the Swedish art context, we may (re-) consider the relational impact of criticality.