Participants
Hillevi Cecilia Högström participates in the Småland Biennial with the solo exhibition “Balancing on Wild Apples with a Toolbox” and in the project Kojan, where four artists/artists' groups have been invited to explore the theme “spontaneous play” together with different groups of children.
Hillevi Cecilia Högström has worked together with students at Österängskolan's after-school program in grades 3-6 to design a shelter in the schoolyard. Högström's creation, “The Secret Garden,” consists of five components: The Platform, The Wave, The Gate, The Vegetation, and The Machine, and forms a multi-level room heavily influenced by the children's model constructions and drawings. Here, there is a magical gate, winding plants, and a wave whose undulating form serves both as a boundary and an invitation to peek inside. On the lower platform, one can sit together but away from the rest of the playground; climbing one level up in the tree, you can look out over your kingdom. The shelter was created together with the children during the spring and will be displayed throughout the summer.
In the exhibition “Balancing on Wild Apples with a Toolbox,” Högström returns to her own childhood treehouse in Strömsbergsskogen in Jönköping, where she gathers what remains of the shelter, every piece of wood, every rusty nail. As a visitor, you can experience how the fragments are broken down piece by piece, much like a childhood memory.
In her works, Hillevi Cecilia Högström explores changes in various environments, often from a personal standpoint. The landscape is central to an extensive research effort, sometimes with performative elements. It is deconstructed and then reassembled in a new constellation that tells a story. The research work is often broad, time-consuming, and brushes against obsession. With the help of personal memories of places and scientific hypotheses, she creates installations, often using materials that symbolize the Scandinavian industry: steel and wood in combination with the glass displays of museum education. Through her artistry, she seeks to understand the world we live in and how we change it.
