Malin Ståhl

Malin Ståhl is a visual artist based in Östersund, Sweden, whose work takes its departure in performance. The landscape and nature act both as material and site and her work often deal with relationships, hierarchies and structures as well as resistance. Ståhl’s work is process oriented where time and circular approaches are of importance. She is trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Iceland Academy of the Arts.

24 June - 23 July 2020

Body-Landscape-Building - watercolours and a Warden Tree for the Place.
Kropp-landskap-byggnad - akvareller och ett vårdträd för platsen. Body-Landscape-Building is a series of three watercolours treating the visual relationship between the landscape and the body bloodstream as movement between the places of the landscape. The heart is the key intersection (junction point) but will only be found in co-existence with its blood stream.

Body - Landscape - Building

Memory, remembering a process, a moment, an event; love as method
circle / marking
not be neutral
throw things into the bucket, mix - switch into marking/circling

tentative research
method - love

The Warden Tree was present at Busstorget between June and September 2020

At the Balcony, a space at Busstorget intended for events, a warden tree is placed. The warden tree watches over the place and its inhabitants, it has its roots in the soil and its branches reaches towards the sky. In the counties of Jämtland and Härjedalen the maple was a common warden tree at farms and summer pastures. Fruit trees have also been used as warden tree but are far more rare. At Busstorget I have placed a summer apple tree of the variety Pirja.

a Warden Tree for the Place /
VÅRDTRÄDET. Att vårda en plats - ett vårdträd för platsen

Jag tar av mig skorna i hallen

I leave my shoes at the door / Jag tar av mig skorna i hallen
2019

Performed as a collective action during Ecology of Violence at Busstorget in Östersund - ongoing throughout the day.  Taking one’s shoes off at the door is a habit that relates to the home. What happens to a place like Busstorget when its visitors take their shoes off at the door? Welcome to participate in this collective action and leave your shoes on one of the door mats placed at the Busstorget entrances. The piece centers on inside-outside, home-away and the question of safety. Busstorget is perceived as an unsafe place whereas home is perceived as a safe space. Still, the majority of violent crime is committed at home.

Public Space Research: Filling the Cracks / Så i sprickorna
2020

Performed at Busstorget in Östersund within the framework of Lokala konstprojekt / Kunskapsnav offentlig konst with the Public Art Agency Sweden / IntraGalactic arts collective.
With more than a thousand poppy seeds scattered around the travel centre Busstorget in Östersund the piece touches upon a visualisation of peoples movement in public space as budding plants will be worn down by footfall and street cleaning. In out of the way corners and passages, pockets of poppy plants will appear in the cracks between paving stones and bear witness to natures ability to reclaim urban spaces.

Public Space Research: We Draw in Circles / Vi ritar i cirklar
2020

Performed at Busstorget in Östersund within the framework of Lokala konstprojekt / Kunskapsnav offentlig konst with the Public Art Agency Sweden / IntraGalactic arts collective.
To allow oneself to exist in the unknown, to be active but not productive. To temporarily alter the situation of the urban space. The circles are contextualised in the marking out of street plants by chalking their name to the pavement*.
(* naming street plants, tapping into the practices of Sauvages de ma rue and More Than Weeds)

Ljungdalen, 17 September 2019

The project artist group travelled to Ljungdalen on the regional coach service. In mid September we made open fire coffee using my new coffee pot. We drank our coffee by the Ljungan river.

Ink making / (placing)

Natural ink made of Crowberry (empetrum nigrum), Heather (calluna vulgaris). The plants were collected in Ljungdalen during the Research week #2 trip in 2019.
Can the ink made mark a place, can it become a document of place and time? This ink making is a tentative testing of formats for documentation of a place.

Växtkarta / Bus Stops in Jämtland

2019-2020 (unfinished)

Plants collected at the bus stops creating an archive of roadside plant typology around Jämtland county. A list of bus stops and plants are accompanied by a box of dried plants. This archive is a direct representation of its time through the selection of plant specimens present. It becomes a way of mapping, of outlining, and of situating a location.

East - Meadow Flowers and Modernism / Body Art
West - Meadow Flowers and Modernism / Body Art
2020 (sketching/thinking)

Thinking of space and place, possibilities and limitations, through photographs of modernist sculpture and wild flowers against the windows on the upper level of Busstorget in Östersund. The means of super-imposition opens up a world of possibilities, placing and dis-placing.

2018-2020 (random)

A literature list contemplating on the how, who and why of reference material. I have photographed reference book covers and reference material gathered randomly as I’ve come across it during the project. I’ve used project mark (^/ as the title of my literature list situating my references within this specific context.