Zoi Johansson

“One day, I realised I was standing on the plateau of my lifetime, looking at my memories like artefacts. Objects frozen in time. For every passing year they got dustier and dustier, until unrecognisable because of their foggy veil. And now. Pause. I have stepped into this spectacle. Like a museum of my life”. (Quote from my essay Autonomies)

I work with relief and sculpture using an ancient plastering technique from Morocco called Tadelakt that I combine with ancient stories from the Black Sea, from where my ancestors came. In my art, I juxtapose the hardening of the material with the psychological hardening of the mind, creating a path into the past as well as into the future. In my work, storytelling is central. There is something deeply human about it that I always seek.