PORTFOLIO Biography Carolina Falkholt, born 1977, lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. Carolina Falkholt has since the late 90s, developed the art form of graffiti, by incorporating musical and performative aspects, among others. In addition to spray painting and drawing, she works with sculpture, performance, text, music and video, and she is an active musician. The different expressions are intertwined and words, motifs and sounds fertilize each other, gets repeated and rephrased, creating structures, rhythm and meaning. Falkholt has primarily become known through her monumental, site-specific and improvised murals, both nationally and internationally. Her in situ process is furious and exact. The paintings are often built up with sweeping or running swashes of color and on top of that her significant line drawings ranging from feather-like amorphous structures, to sometimes almost naturalistic motifs, meticulously built up of small circles. The motifs have semiotic elements of body-like characters such as eyes, vaginas or hand gestures with elements of hand alphabet and sign language. Through her choice of subjects and her outspokenness, she has also gained a reputation as a controversial and deeply committed artist. Carolina Falkholt is also a musician and her music is strongly linked to her other oeuvre, sometimes as an important part of the process, like sketch material. For a long time the music was only for the artist's private use but in conjunction with an exhibition at Ystad Art Museum in 2015 Falkholt released a box with vinyl singles combined with texts written by different people, inspired by her practice. During the period 2011-2016 Falkholt has been presented in solo shows at the Gothenburg Museum of Art, Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Mimers konsthall, Konsthallen Trollhättan, Hammarkullen Konsthall, Ystad Art Museum, Östersund City Museum, Kristinehamn Art Museum, Gallery Nils Åberg in Göteborg, Steneby Konsthall in Dalsland and Klippans Konsthall in Skåne. She has also participated in several group exhibitions, among others Här/Nu at Artipelag in Stockholm, Man måste faktiskt älska at Virserums Konsthall, Map of the new art at Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, X-Border Art Biennial in Luleå, Rovaniemi and Severomorsk, The Arcade Project at Y-gallery in Minsk, Belarus, Andra världar on Skövde konsthall and Mjellby Art Museum, Art Of The Streets in Stockholm, Tillstånd at Alingsås Konsthall, Heart & Brain at Avesta Art and Spiritual styling at Gotlands Art Museum. In spring 2013 she curated and participated in the acclaimed exhibition Mynningsladdare at Röda Sten Konsthall in Gothenburg. During 2017, Falkholt is having solo shows at Eskilstuna Art Museum, Österängens konsthall in Jönköping and at Gallery Thomassen in Gothenburg.
She is also participating with a monumental sculptural work in SculptureMotion at Wanås and she has received a one year residency at ISCP in New York, starting in september. Falkholt is represented in the collections of the Gothenburg Museum of Art, Museum of Public Art in Lund, Statens konstråd, Skövde Art Museum and The Cultural History Museum in Halland. With public works she is represented in many Swedish cities like Nyköping, Kungälv, Simrishamn, Ystad, Bromölla, Hultsfred, Uppsala, Alingsås, Bengtsfors, Mariestad, Avesta, Härnösand, Luleå, Visby and Halmstad. Internationally, she has made big monumental paintings in Durres in Albania, Rovaniemi in Finland, Severomorsk in Russia, Amman in Jordan and Cairo in Egypt. Carolina Falkholt has been portrayed in the books Urban art legends, Archive of Visions and Actions, Graffiti woman, Playground Sweden, Sätta Färg På Staden and in Mia Hulter's and Cecilia Actis' documentary Blue Karma Tiger. In 2015 she published the book SILO, a documentation of her huge art project Graffiti Mariestad. In 2015, she released a box set of vinyl singles on Kning Disk and in 2016 she started her own recordlabel, ORD, LJUD OCH KÖN. Upcoming work The body is at the center of today's theoretical debate. The requesting body, the narcissistic, sexualized, the industrialized, the sick and the commercialized body. The body as a shell, surface, language, myth and stage. The body as a field of power games. This is something that has been part of my practice for a long time, but now I want to articulate it more clearly. In 2017, I will focus on the link between capitalism and the female body, which among others will result in the exhibition DIN JÄVLA HORA (You Whore) at Gallery Thomassen in Gothenburg in August 2017. After that I go to New York for a one year scholarship granted by IASPIS. My practice has its roots in graffiti and hip-hop - a cultural sphere largely obsessed with money, and where the commercialized and sexualized female body - the whore - is a central figure. During my stay in NY, not only hip-hop's origin but also the symbolic capital of capitalism, I will continue my work on this theme.
Installation view, solo exhibition ORD, LJUD & KÖN (Word, Sound & Sex), Kungälv, Sweden 2016 Installation view, solo exhibition O R D (Word), Hammarkullens Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden 2016
Untitled (Firewall), Parkskolan, Ystad, Sweden 2015
Train of Thoughts (sketch) 2015 Untitled (Firwall) Ystad, Sweden, 2015
Installation view from solo exhibition Associationsrikedom, Ystad Art Museum, Sweden 2015
Installation view, solo exhibition Sociation, Kristinehamn Art Museum, Sweden 2015 Installation view, public work, TECHNE, Mimers Kulturhus, Kungälv, Sweden 2016
Detail of the mural Fountain, on The GrEEK Campus, Cairo, Egypt 2015
Untitled (Firewall), Severomorsk, Russia 2013