First let’s meet Sasha. She’s buried in the heart of Stockholm, surrounded by narrow streets, fake gabled roofs, and extremely flat facades with painted-on windows. Sasha ironically reinterprets the familiar shape of the roofs in Gamla Stan in an unfamiliar way, like bulging, pear-shaped and elongated. She does this through a composition of seven distinct walls in bright colours, giving the feeling as if we were on the set of a stage.
Furthermore, Sasha is covered completely in glossy ceramic tiles - normally reserved for bathrooms. Her array of colours and materials are inspired by her surroundings, and the patterns found on her walls are a myriad of designs found on the buildings in Gamla Stan.
Thus, Sasha stands at a distance from the buildings surrounding her to create a foreground, blending and mixing the different hues you are exposed to in Gamla Stan. Each window is placed to frame her surroundings and create imaginary faces at different viewpoints. The result is a new structure that creates some tension to the area and is closer to the kitsch on the cute spectrum.
It is important to note that cute and kitsch are not the same. Kitsch elements conform and provide familiarity, giving a sense of nostalgia in a comfortable and solid manner. Cute, on the other hand, is unfamiliar yet exciting and offers a vulnerability that draws us in.
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Instructor: Ulrika Karlsson, Cecilia Lundbäck
Programme: Masters Thesis
Year: 2021
Sasha




