Sara Sjölin

Dive into the comical performative encounter with artist Sara Sjölin.

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

In this performance, the artist assumes the role of the host, a position that carries significant responsibility and creative potential. Acting as a mediator between the audience and the individual acts that follow, the role of the host is multifaceted, extending beyond a mere introduction. By performing prior to the other acts, the artist not only sets the tone, but also creates an atmosphere that prepares the audience for the experience ahead. Through their presence, they establish a sense of connection, inviting the audience into the shared space with energy, intention, and focus.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

The work of Swedish-Swiss, Copenhagen-based artist Sara Sjölin is centered on the affective dimensions of comedy as it emerges in aestheticized forms of tragedy, mundane observation, and spontaneous imagination. Enacted in film, speech, performance, and installation, Sjölin’s work fictionalizes partial truths, creatively resituates them, and brings them into view through processes of tentative sense-making, gradually revealing the multifaceted and dynamically shifting nature of meta-narrative and poetic worlds. 

Sara Sjölin has presented solo exhibitions at Uniondocs (US), Lagune Ouest (DK), and SALTS (CH). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions at institutions such as June Art Fair (CH), CHART (DK), and CPH:DOX (DK). She has been an artist in residence at the Danish Institute in Rome and at ISCP in New York through the support of the Danish Arts Foundation. Sjölin holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

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PERFORMANCE BULLETIN

Den Frie and Toaster presents the upcoming performance festival The Performance Bulletin, which will take place June 5-8 2025. Together with Danish and international performance artists, we investigate how situational performance pieces can introduce alternative ways of engaging and experiencing contemporary art.  Formed by artistic actions that disrupts our attention and opens the senses, the program asks what kinds of imaginations can be activated through embodied, situated, and processual performances.

The program is based on close collaborations with artists, who experiment with everything from feminist openings of symbols and monuments in the city, to collective dance ecstasies, vocal performances, joints dinners, performative explorations of the city’s infrastructure,s and traffic hubs, to as well as performance pieces that slow down the paste pace and enhance our sensitivity. Improvisation and movement are central forces in the program, which experiment with access and negotiate of the use of the public space. Celebrating the unexpected, indeterminate, and estranged impulse of performances, the program tests public attention and social processes by the happening of art.

The program is curated by Iben Bach Elmstrøm in close collaborations and dialogue with the artists and the, Toaster and Den Frie curatorial teams. The program is generously supported by New Carlsberg Foundation, Bikuben Foundation, Danish Arts Council and Roskilde University.