Concluding the season, Irina Kulik’s lecture will introduce two female artists characterized by vanguard language, original style, and unconventional approaches to creativity.
Swedish mystic and artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) is one of the pioneering abstract painters in art history, with her first geometric compositions (1906) predating even the first abstractions of Vasily Kandinsky. Influenced by the ideas of Madame Blavatsky and Christian Rosencreutz, in 1908 af Klint was introduced to Rudolf Steiner, further solidifying her interest in spiritualism and anthroposophy. She founded The Five—a purely female art group whose members shared common views and regularly held spiritualistic séances. Af Klint’s oeuvre, however, remained little known for many decades, until her abstract paintings were partially exhibited to the public in the 1980s. In 2018, Moderna Museet Stockholm announced the establishment of the Hilma af Klint Room—a special space within the museum for displaying the artist’s selected works on a permanent basis.
Mariko Mori (b. 1961) is a contemporary Japanese artist, who studied fashion in Tokyo and fine arts in London and New York. She currently lives and works between these three cities. A former fashion model, Mori employs her previous professional experience to create photographs depicting her as futuristic heroines resembling characters from sci-fi movies, cosplay, and anime. She also works with video, sculpture, and installation, using 3D printing techniques a lot. Many of the artist’s projects derive from and bear traces of Japan’s traditional or contemporary culture and folklore, while also addressing the theme of technology and ecology in modern society.
