Time for Stockholm! I didn't make it up to Erika last summer, so I was looking forward to this trip. We had actually planned to spend time in her new summer house, but as the weather forecast only predicted one day of sun for the whole week we binned that plan and stayed in the city instead.
On the way to Erika I had dropped Linnea off with her friends from Abu Dhabi, the Homann twins, who have a summer house on Ekerö. Lucas had also come along, but he was staying on Kungsholmen in a hotel for the week, with his friend Tove.
So, it was just Erika and me!
We made the most of the sunny weather of the first day and went for a long walk on Djurgården, to check out the Princess Estelle Sculptural Park. Djurgården has been royal property since 1452, before Columbus discovered America! The Rosendal part of Djurgården was used for displaying public art already in the 19th century.
In 2019 the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation was founded which started organising events and activities relating to art in a bid to revive this area culturally. There have been temporary installations and exhibitions here, but most importantly, the foundation have installed one new permanent sculpture each year since, counting four works to date.
The first work we saw was Life Rings by Elmgreen & Dragset from 2021. This was created especially for the Sculpture Park. Stockholm is surrounded by water, and where there is water - there is always a life buoy. Here a tower of life buoys, all connected.
Wind Sculpture In Bronze I, by Yinka Shonibare CBE, 2022. Another sculpture commissioned for the Sculpture Park. This wind sculpture is a metaphor for travel and migration, using a concept of hybridity. The patterns of this sculpture is based on Dutch factory-made textiles, based on Indonesian batiks that were once sold to the West African colonies of Britain and considered as authentic African products by the world. It is made to inspire conversations about the global interdependence.
This sculpture is called Osagd, and its by Charlotte Gyllenhammar. This is the 2023 addition to the sculpture park, the fourth and most recent permanent work and the first that has human form.
It is not really a specific person but rather a portrait of the magnificence within us all. It is placed in the middle of this forest clearing, which made me think of something out of a fairytale. It's hard to see in the photos, but it was quite large, 4 meters tall, quite impressive.
The last work we saw was actually the first work to be placed in the permanent collection. It is by Alice Aycock from 2020, and it's called Hoop-La. It is a very architectural sculpture with a number of points of view.
This was placed right by the Folke Bernadotte bridge, so we ended our walk around the Sculpture Park and crossed the bridge to go visit the Museum of Ethnography.
See that in the next post!
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