Foundation for Contemporary Arts

Fia Backström

Lives in New York, NY

Born 1958, Aland Islands, Finland

Visual Artist

Luring language reigns rampant and generic, while iconoclastic moves on the image abound. I can't smoke you out, because smoking indoors is not permitted. This carpet of slipping senses, handy words for twisted meanings and cunning usage - a visceral occupation of territory for US to inhabit. So Words, Don't Fail Me Now!

These are the bankrupt words of the undermined rhetoric no longer yours: a for agency, f for freedom, r for resistance.

Exceptions made for CO-rporations or your CO-operative spirit turning them into secret mantras for entertainment - for Parisian model agence or f as in F U Calvin Klein far out signification. R as in rotten rhubarb pie, somehow anti-slogans enters the ads. Language development from think tank to focus group, finding selling words for a movement of merchandizing ideas. The right name is everything!

Cult action, group therapy, corporate brainwashed consumer combatants. Together we feel good. Crowd behavior: removing the inhibitions of the individual, no personal responsibility. Yet community is pressure. The formerly functional organization of pockets of activity, the dead-end possibility of the communist collective manifestations, the increasing sophistication of corporate communal outreach, the Hippie yearnings for the primal gathering, the 'We-They identity' of exclusive clubs and gated communities, the projected goodness of 'productive get-togethers' from the family to the national, the pretense of equality. Community as communication as co-appearance - - Stay Connected.

M.F.A., Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden

University of Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden

Columbia University

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS

2009 Studies in Leadership (a family affair), Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO

2008 Pottery and Poetry, The Apartment, Vancouver, Canada

2008 Just Say Yes, Wilkinson Gallery, London, England

2008 That Social Space Between Speaking and Meaning, White Columns, New York, NY

2007 Mmmore, Marabouparken Annex, Stockholm, Sweden

2006 Herd Instinct 360, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2009 Momentum Nordic Festival of Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway

2009 A Spoken Word Exhibition, The Baltic, Newcastle, England

2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

2007 Experiment Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, London, England

2007 United Nations Plaza, Berlin, Germany