SARA SJÖBÄCK

Recollection and reuse in the work of Sara Sjöbäck

‘Building at a scale is a way of being very honest with what I am doing. I am outgoing, and I think my artworks are now reflecting me.'

Astarte (1931) is a novel by Karin Boye — about a mannequin — concerning the changes in society and the introduction of urban modernism, written as a reflection of the city of Stockholm, where the author lived. In and around the 1930s, the Swedish capital was first introduced to illuminated cinema buildings, neon signs, lit advertising and bright shop windows populating the high streets. They draw you in with ’wreaths of lights’ making people flock the street 'from all directions, resembling night flies around a paper lantern during festive nights in August’ (Boye, 1931). The phenomenon of modern city lights is theoretically dissected in the novel, which takes place at night. The city, she writes, ‘is incubated in its own glow, like a giant phosphorescent animal.’

In her sculpture Lights Out (2020), Sara Sjöbäck takes her starting point in Boyes writing: she gets on her bike at night to see the city, in her case, Malmö, in the south of Sweden, half a year into the Covid-19 pandemic. Riding up and down the high street in November, she realises that shops are closing, cinemas are no longer, restaurants have left. ‘Reading Boye made me feel strongly. And I at once grasped that the urban light she had pictured, was gone. I wanted to translate that mood into a body,’ says Sara Sjöbäck.

’But the neon, and shop signs,’ she asked, ‘where have they gone?’

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With the help of local designer, Anna Gudmundsdotter at Malmö Upcycling Service, local supplier, Per Jonsson at Roos Neon was found: a manufacturer outside of the city, that rescues and restores fluorescent signs in large numbers. It is such a fragile material and there I was, in the massive hall of Roos Neon, in piles of old abandoned lights. And I asked the owner Per, ‘Are you not afraid of everything breaking?’ he replied: ‘No, but you must know how to handle it.’ I think I can see it, I said, ‘Can I go home and sketch and come back?’ The next day he taught me how to do all the electrics, he lent me cords and tools that you need, and for the next coming weeks, I built a series of light sculptures, cleaning and restoring hundreds of colored neon, there, on his factory floor.

For the exhibition Inside Swedish Design (2021) at Stockholms Auktionsverk, Sjöbäck made a custom version of Lights Out, built as a modernist chandelier. This effort, as she puts it ‘was a way for me to reflect on Swedish Design through the pandemic. I am a social artist, and I am out seeing society, and the changing urban grid is part of my research method. Communicating what I found, portraying the pulse that I feel, is how the work finds its voice.’

Sjöbäck’s work Car Tower I, II (2020) is an instructive narrative about the nature of her sculpture work in general, which is concerned with society and culture, through the balance between soft poetry and hard technical works. (The societal import is often personal: she is outspoken about sustainability, social equality, and justice). Part of the installation The World is on Fire during Copenhagen Fashion week, the massive Car Tower I, II, were built to reflect on the roaring wildfires around the world in the start of 2020. Since the last five years, her art has grown in scale, and she says: 'I am now working in a bigger scale and in a public environment, outdoors. Before it used to be smaller scale, for a design exhibition, now the work is part of bigger art events.'

Public monuments are at once a concern to society. And in Sjöbäcks mind, that is where her art belongs: 'With Lights Out and Car Towers, I am telling short stories, but there are some stories in between that are missing. My dream would be to be able to create several of them and fill a space with stories, making my thoughts and ideas more accessible, for the public to experience them in full. To create art for a subway station, for instance, would be my dream.'

There is another interesting design take in Sjöbäcks 'public action' art: economy, or a clever approach to the use of materials and skills to learn how to handle them. 'I used to hang out a lot in the garage with my dad, where he builds motorcycles and cars. I did not realize why I had been so comfortable in the workshop before, but now it is obvious. I am drawn to mechanical methods, the rawness of screws and bolts. I have been in that environment my whole life, so I am bringing that into my process,' she says. And it is this approach to learning any skill and approaching reuse materials that make her practice feel almost futuristic. The recycled neon, cars, hairs, glass, and aluminium sheets in her body of work, are sourced, by finding the right manufacturers, dealers, intermediaries. 'Why try to use something new when the material is already there?’ Sjöbäck asks. ’I am not trying to reproduce something that is shiny and perfect, but I am keen to have a high finish even if I’m recycling. It is a way of being smart about the materials I use.'

At Liljevalchs Konsthall’s annual Vårsalong, 2022, Lights Out will be, once again, custom-built to fit its surrounding. Now after travelling for a while, it will be installed in Konsthall belonging to the city of Stockholm, and to its citizens. The work seems to say: here is a monument of Boye’s Street view from a century ago crossed by the results of a pandemic, a sculpture about captivating lights, as well darkness, as a tentative indication of what’s to come.

There is a sensitivity in Sjöbäck’s use of material, calm, confident mechanics, that makes all her sculptures well built. As ever in her work, the artistry is clever and controlled, letting the surface or edge, portray the anxieties of contemporary urban life, assembled with clean lines, and at close inspection, skilled finish. Building at a scale is a way of being very honest with what I am doing,' Sjöbäck says. 'I am outgoing, and I think my artworks are now reflecting me,' concludes.