Katarina Eismann: FOLDOUT

On World Peace Day, 8 May, 70 years after the end of the Second World War, FOLDOUT will open at Moderna Museet Malmö. The project is divided into several parts and connects strongly to the alarming diaspora of our time, while also exploring how individual stories are part of the collective memory. The exhibition is presented in two parts at the museum's Loading Dock, one of which is ongoing and will take form during the exhibition period. In addition to the exhibition, a series of workshops with students and teachers at Malmö latinskola upper secondary school will be organized.

FOLDOUT is an a boundary-crossing ongoing project since 2008, which has evolved through several collaborations between a choreographer, a performance artist, a musician, a mezzosoprano and a journalist who explored what it entails to inherit memories of war, to grow up in the shadow of previous events such as flight and exile and the possibility of processing these memories from the vantage point of a different time and place. At Moderna Museet Malmö two parts of the project will be presented, one of which will be a work in progress during the exhibition period through the many stories and memories of war that exist in Malmö today.

Part 1 Remembering a Flight to Exile is a complex installation based on the stories about Katarina Eismann’s father’s dramatic escape on a fishing boat from Copenhagen to Malmö during the Second World War. Though the starting point are stories about the family’s escape through Europe, the story is told from different perspectives and takes place and materializes in the present. Who is remembering? And whose memories do we recall?

Part 2 In Via looks at what it entails to inherit memories of war. As an aftermath to peace, the memories of the war were passed down for generations. Stories are inherited, and new constellations of experiences arise, in perpetual change. Which stories are carried into the future?

"Today, millions of people are refugees, through fragments the story unfolds. In Via will evolve during the exhibition period, through encounters with those who in different ways will step into the work", says Katarina Eismann.

In association with Moderna Museet Malmö, an addition to the FOLDOUT project is created with help from students and teachers at Malmö latinskola upper secondary school. They are participating in a series of workshops on the theme “the legacy and transformation of memory”, with Katarina Eismann,the museum’s art educator Anna Rowland, and the journalist Merete Monberg. A new part of FOLDOUT will evolve during the summer. This autumn, Moderna Museet Malmö will pursue its FOLDOUT project with new groups of participants.

"In the constant news feed, refugee catastrophe risks becoming something abstract or a news-story that quickly flickers past and is forgotten. Katarina Eismann’s ongoing project tries to get under our skin. In what way are we a part of these catastrophes?", says John Peter Nilsson, Museum Director at Moderna Museet Malmö.

FOLDOUT is made possible with dedicated funding from the Fredrik Roos Foundation and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, the Sveriges Bildkonstnärsfond, Kulturkontakt Nord and Stockholm County Council.