Klara Lidén always works with what appears to be everyday objects that already possess meaning or have a purpose. The play between what is desirable and what is negligible is applied both to objects and people in Lidén’s world. What is rubbish and what is art? What is private and what is universal? What is mine and what is yours?
“Self Portrait with Keys to the City” raises the issue of who has access to what in our society and where we actually belong. By means of small gestures and movements Lidén takes control of the space, twisting and turning the perspective. Klara Lidén has with relentless consistency found her own path and alternatives well away from the mainstream. In both her films and her installations, we encounter an artist who does not want to be part of a run-of-the-mill system or be drawn into society’s social and cultural structures. She breaks down and builds up; she takes something out of its context and gives it a new position somewhere else.
Klara Lidén exhibited at Moderna Museet for the first time in 2007. She called the exhibition “Unheimlich Manöver” (Unheimlich Manoeuvre) and it involved her emptying her apartment of its contents. She gathered together every single item and compacted them into one gigantic solid mass, which she then displayed at the museum. After her major international breakthrough, which included receiving a special mention at the Venice Biennale in 2011, Klara Lidén had her second exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
In 2013 she was awarded the sculpture prize of Moderna Museets Vänner, but it is not just in Sweden that Lidén has found recognition; she has enjoyed considerable international success too, and already has some heavyweight museum exhibitions to her name. These include a solo exhibition at New Museum in New York in 2012. She has also had solo exhibitions at Serpentine Gallery in London and Reena Spaulings Fine Art in New York, and an exhibition at Galerie Neu in Berlin in 2015.