Type of work: Light Installation

Material: 43 km of crocheted fishing line with the diameter of 1.00 mm

Size: 4 x 4 x 1 metre

Year: 2026

Placement:  Staffanstorps konsthall, Sweden

Photos: Martin Billberg

About the work: “Cumulus” consisted here of 43 km of fishing line crocheted by hand and was installed in the church-like ceiling of Staffanstorps konsthall during the exhibition “OVER ALL” together with artist Lennart Alves’ cyanotypes. The cloud was lit by existing lamps in the ceiling which made the cloud-like forms resemble a fluffy cloud in the summer when the temperature is favorable and the weather is stable. The exhibition ran from the 17th of April to the 24th of May.

Materials: Crocheted fishing line with the diameter of 1.00 mm

Size: From 25 x 25 x 15 cm to 80 x 50 x 50 cm

Year: 2026

Placement:  Concert Hall & City Theatre of Helsingborg, Sweden

Photos: Martin Billberg

About the work: Cocoons is an installation of spheres made in fishing line in the diametre of 1 mm. The fishing line is crocheted by hand and every cocoon measures from 25 x 25 x 15 cm up to 80 x 50 x 50 cm.The cocoons were installed at the Concert Hall and the City Theatre in Helsingborg during the event Drömljus (Dream Light) in February 2026. Each cocoon was lit by a lamp of multiple leds from beneath.

On Saturday the 15th of November at 1-4 pm, the exhibition “Shedding Skin” will open at Galleri Skelderhus in Munka Ljungby in the South of Sweden. The exhibition will be open every Saturday and Sunday until the 14th of December at 11 am – 4 pm, or according to agreement. Welcome!

About the exhibition:

“Some reptiles shed their skin to grow and renew themselves, some insects create cocoons when they undergo a change or transformation. In my exhibition “Shedding Skin” I have knitted fishing line into long strips that hang from the ceiling. Like snake skins left over after molting, the strips mark the remains of a process of change. The strips form transparent grids and fishing line is a grateful light material, which is here installed with a special lighting setup. In my works, there is often a wordless communication where the beautiful and slow emerge, similar to light phenomena in nature that constantly change and at the same time return in seasonal and daily rhythms. “Shedding Skin” is about the membranes between the inner and the outer, and about the desire to, like a reptile, create a new boundary between the self and the outside world.”

Type of work: Larger light installation

Materials: 40 km of crocheted fishing line in the diameter of 1.00 mm

Size: 3,5 x 2,5 x 1,5 metres

Year: 2025

Temporary placement:  Sofiero Castle Garden, Helsingborg, Sweden

Photo: Martin Billberg (above)

About the work: During the light event Höstljus at Sofiero in Helsingborg, Sweden, a cloud of 40 km fishing line was installed. Höstljus was open between October 26th until November 9th between 4.30 and 9 pm. The 40 km fishing line is crocheted by hand by the artist and was lit into a cloud of rain and thunder in collaboration with light designer Viktor Hallonsten.

More information about the residency can be found at Spacehouse Himalayas Artists.

Welcome to buy my new art catalogue for 200 + 72 SKR in postage cost! Please write me an email if interested at joannathede(at)gmail(dot)com

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Collect, structure and trace. On the art of Joanna Thede

To collect, structure and trace. These are the three methods that Joanna Thede works with.

To collect, it takes time. It takes perseverance and determination. To structure, on the other hand, requires an overview and a sense of spatiality. To trace means to follow an inner voice, to search and be led by one’s longing to find and understand.

Joanna Thede’s works Recollections – Patterns and Years of Recollections (both from 2015) and Re-Trails and Re-Tales (both from 2018-2019) are clearly based on the methods of collecting, structuring and tracing. In such different materials as medicinal blister packages in aluminium, beach-found fragments in glass, metal and plastic together with braided hair – both synthetic and natural – the artist lets common and short-lived objects represent the existential dimensions of life.

Under what conditions does a person live, who is dependent on a medicine to survive? Why do we continue to poison the world’s oceans, even though the consequences are devastating? Can the status difference between natural and artificial hair tell us something about interpersonal hierarchies based on the colour of one’s skin and economy?

Another common trait in these sculptural installations is the strong impression of pattern, creating rhythm and motion. Simultaneously, a suggestive effect appears when a collection of uniform objects is joined in this way into one single, larger body. The eye thus forced to shift between, on one hand, seeing the individual part in the overall image and, on the other, grasping the large form.

In consideration of Joanna Thede’s readily use of already existing objects, her art can be described as a kind of collage. The meeting between smooth and rugged, elegant and disgusting, creates visual collisions, leading to the appearance of new possibilities of interpretation.

A hundred years ago, the artists calling themselves Dadaists and Surrealists sought precisely this kind of bewildering, contradictory experiences. In Stones and Bones (from 2020), she uses materials that evoke just these split feelings: smooth, sea-sanded stones next to skeleton parts and bone remnants from bird and fish.

The long, hand-knitted textiles in Green Reflections (from 2022) bring to mind the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), who in her textile sculptures and large-scale installations embodied memories and childhood traumas in yarn and tapestry fabric.

A similar approach is used by Joanna Thede in The Way Home (1998), where an old salvaged blouse is embroidered with blood-red lines to draw the traces of the artist’s travels. Simultaneously, the sewing thread becomes a frenetic bloodstream with the heart or home as a pulsating, radiant center – a reminder of the transience of life and, perhaps, of never stopping to collect, structure and trace.

/ Linda Fagerström, freelance art critic and associate professor in Art history & visual studies at Linnæus University, Sweden

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The address is HKP – Helsingborgs konstproduktion, Kvarnstensgatan 15, Gåsebäck, Helsingborg.

Come by for a few minutes or stay several hours! There will be drinks and snacks.

Materials: Fishing line, video projection, projector stand

Size: Approximately 1,70 x 1 x 1 metres

Year: 2023

Exhibited: Stadshusgalleriet in Laholm

Photo: Maja Kristin Nylander

About the work: “Windings” is a light installation made from 8 873 meters of fishing line in the sizes .40, .45 and .50 mm. The fishing line is crocheted by hand and wound together into a cloud-like object, which is illuminated with a looped short film of moving light. The projector is built into a plywood box. Fishing line is a grateful light material and I got the idea for the projection when the sun’s oblique October rays filtered in through the remaining foliage on the crocheted fishing line lying in a pile in the studio. Thanks to Karro Håkansson for partial help with crocheting and to Tony Petersson for making the projector stand!

Materials: Mixed acrylic and wool yarn knitted by hand, recycled wooden strips, cat hair, fishing line crocheted by hand

Size: 8 x 3 x 0,05 metres

Year: 2023

Exhibited: Stadshusgalleriet in Laholm

About the work: “Green Reflections” is an installation in five parts knitted from mixed acrylic and wool yarn and with small cocoons of cat hair wrapped in crocheted fishing line. The green parts are about 2.20 meters long and the blue 2.10-2.50 meters high. In the green ones, I’ve knitted the shapes with jagged edges and structure in the surface by randomly using knit and purl stitches higgledy-piggledy. The frames are made with recycled wood where the frames of the blue parts are laminated in strips to suit the organic shapes. The cocoons are made of red-blonde cat hair that varies between lighter and blonder, and the small nets for the cocoons are crocheted with fishing line.

The work title is a play on the word reflection, which can be both a physical reflection and a thought. In terms of the title, the work is also associated with the earlier “Reflections – Memorising Monet” as Monet’s work “Water Lilies – Green Reflections” inspired the design of that work.

Photos: Maja Kristin Nylander

Welcome to the exhibition “Vindlingar och spår (Windings and Traces) – knitted art works and light installations” in Stadshusgalleriet in Laholm running through March until April 15th.

Exhibition text: “The artist Joanna Thede works with installations where light often is one of the main materials. She also often recycles materials that are otherwise discarded or hidden away – such as trash, used blister packages and cut-off hair – that turn into narratives of our time and the traces we leave behind. For the exhibition at Stadshusgalleriet, she has also made knitted art works.

Joanna Thede has made several art works for public spaces, among others at The Preschool Vallmon in Laholm. The work “Spring Twig” from 2022 is placed indoors and consists of a light sculpture with leaf drawings of attached plexiglass pieces that can change colour in various rhythms, that the children themselves are able to choose.”

Here you will find the opening hours of the exhibition. Welcome!

Joanna Thede arbetar med installationer av återanvänt material. Det vi annars slänger eller gömmer undan – skräp, använda pillerkartor eller avklippt hår – blir i Thedes installationer berättelser om vår samtid och de spår vi lämnar efter oss.

Thede hämtar inspiration från skuggspel och ljusfenomen i naturen, samt de ljusa punkter som uppstår i mörker. Hon tilldelas Emil Olssons bidrag för sin känsla och förmåga att sinnligt materialisera samtidens flyktighet.

Translation:

Joanna Thede works with installations of recycled material. What we otherwise throw or hide away – trash, used blister packages or cut-off hair – in Thede’s installations become narratives of our times and the traces we leave behind.

Thede gets inspiration from shadow plays and light phenomena in nature, as well as the bright points that arise in the dark. She is awarded the Emil Olsson grant for her feeling and ability to sensually materialize contemporary volatility.

Commissioned by: Laholm’s municipality, Sweden

Place: Vallmons preschool in the city of Laholm in Sweden

Material: Light installation

Size: 250 x 100 x 35 cm

Year: 2022

About the commission: “Spring Twig” in Laholm is an art work that is hand carved out of balsa wood in the shape of a branch. There are drawings of leaves on five plexiglass pieces fixated in the branch. An integrated led light make it possible to light the leaves in different colours. There is a DVD hanging from the branch like a drop, and a rainbow may be lit on the wall behind the Spring twig, which the kids can then see and try to touch. The art work is installed as part of an inner room where the children get together and play and relax in the preschool of Vallmon. The art work was inaugurated in June 2022.

Materials: Stones with natural holes and skeleton pieces of fish and bird, fishing line, light setting

Size: Approx. 6 x 5 x 4 m3

Year: 2021

Exhibited: SPARK gallery in Malmoe, Sweden

About the work: “Stones and Bones” contains of approximately 30 braids of fishing line in which stones and skeleton pieces of fish and bird are braided in and are hanging from the ceiling. For many years, the stones and bones have been gathered during long beach walks. All that is gathered has been eroded by sand and waves: the bone bits are scraped clean and the stones have natural holes in them.

The work is shown with slowly pulsating light settings in three phases, giving it an impression of breathing. At the same time, the alternating shadows on the walls are displayed in different nuances as well as in multiple layers.

Here is a short video of Stones and Bones light installation:

Here are some photos by Cecilia Sering from inside and outside of the showroom:

During Bästa Biennalen 2021 in the South of Sweden, I was hosting light laborations for mainly young people at Landskrona Museum although persons of all ages participated. There was recycled everyday material to make objects with in one room and a darker area with mini torches to experiment with the results and light in another. During the evening of “Kulturnatten” on the 5th of November 6-8 pm, I presented some of my own light installations which were also on display during the week of the workshops as inspiration.

Type of work: Painting in 4 pieces

Materials: Acrylic and waterbased oil paint on hardboard

Size: 36 x 28 cm each piece

Year: 2010 + 2020

About the work: Acrylic and water-based oil on hardboard, this series of paintings was begun in the 1990’s. The second layer was painted in the early 2000’s and the third layer – of shadows of branches in direct sun light – was applied 2020. The times and memories through the decades are inherent in the series, and the paintings have now moved to private art collections.

Commissioned by: Uddevalla municipality, Sweden

Place: Källdalsskolan in the city of Uddevalla in Sweden

Material: Print on glass

Size: 313 x 304 x 5 cm

Year: 2020

About the commission: “Stråk” in Uddevalla is an art work, printed on glass by PrintGlas in Stockholm. The art work is installed as part of the main entry at the leisure building at the school Källdalsskolan. The school with the new art work was inaugurated in September 2020.

One part of the commission contained working with pupils, and in some way re-use their material in the finished work. The pupils got the task to write down what they really like doing in their free time, except for anything related to a screen. Their contributions were inserted as elements in the pattern of the local map, forming the art work. The pupils’ own favourite spare time actions are now imprinted into the building of the leisure centre, where many of them will spend some their spare time.

“Recycled Tales and Trails”
After several decades of production, Joanna Thede’s solo exhibition displays art works most often made in recycled materials. At Hässleholm’s kulturhus, several new installations will be presented, of which one is containing donated hair from inhabitants of Hässleholm.
”In my works, I recycle both materials and contents of things that are otherwise discarded, thrown away or hidden. With the conscious use of daylight and artificial lighting, everyday materials are turned into installations where the unexpected, skew and frail are made visible.”

Autumn programme at Hässleholms kulturhus. Information in Swedish about the solo exhibition on page 8.

More info at www.hassleholmkulturhus.se

Welcome to Metropolis: by Light in Malmö, Sweden, opening on the night of the 14th of September!

An outdoor light installation will be exhibited in Slottsparken during 10 days. This will form part of the section the Artistic light together with installations by 4 other artists: Carin Pleininger, Ann Böttcher, Åsa Persson och Pontus Ikander. Furthermore, there will be around 40 various light installations in the areas of  the City Light, the Way of Light and Place-a-light – the latter with light students.

More info in Swedish can be found here

The title of the exhibition is “Kura skymning”, in English “Huddle in the dusk”. It will show a number of art works, mainly light installations, which change with the day and night light. Please come and visit first in day light and then later during the darker hours! It is also possible to stay over a period of time to experience the changes of light within the works.

Opening hours Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 10 am-7 pm, Wednesday 10 am-4 pm, Saturday 10 am-1 pm, Sunday 1-4 pm. Welcome!

Place: Northwood Children’s Hospice in Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Material: Adhesive fourcolour print

Size: 160 x 118 cm

Years: 2017-2019

About the work: Refractions is a digital photography of a light refraction made with a torch and a DVD onto a white wall indoors. The photo is then digitally reworked into a pattern for a contravision print, produced for and installed onto a double glass door at Northwood Children’s Hospice which is a children’s hospice in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The installation of the contravision print has the function of a blind: making it impossible from the outside to see through the windows, at the same time letting full day light through and keeping the view intact from inside the room.

The contravision material was installed during 2 years.

Photos: Ruth Nesbit

From the outside:

From the inside:

More info from the Tartu Valgus website: “The festival will be opened to the public on Friday, 21 October 2016 and the opening events will run the entire weekend till 23 October. In addition, there is a sideprogram featuring different activities and events (e.g. theatre to cinema, concerts, everything that has to do with light, activities based on citizen initiatives, etc.) lasting from 13 October to 13 November 2016.”

Size: Each bubble has a diameter of 7 – 15 cm

Content: Within our collaborational project Breaths, artist Solveig Lindgren Inderbitzin and I made a new branch: Breaths in glass, together with Incendi glasblåseri and its owners, the glass artists Helena Dunér och Espen Jensen, in the small village of Höör in Skåne in the south of Sweden. Together, we invited two local 4th grade classes and a group of adolescent refugees, who blew glass spheres with us. Every participant made one bubble each, which continues to bear the form and traces of their breath. Thus each bubble has a personality of its own in all its imperfection, together forming an ephemeral cloud.

Installation at Höör Library – photos by Lennart Bengtsson (including the one above):

Interactive art work in progress – photos by Anna Bokström:

Photo during the opening at the library: Joanna Thede

On the 28th of November, there is an inauguration of the public commission Earthstar in Johannelund, Stockholm by artist Catrin Andersson. These outdoor geometric sculptures began with a workshop where I had the opportunity to dig out parts of the ground areas with kids from several daycare centers nearby. Photos of the process can be seen scrolling down the link on the webpage in Swedish konstiparken.wordpress.com/tidsplan/

Photo: Catrin Andersson/Joanna Thede

The gate is designed in collaboration with Architect SAR/MSA Inger Thede. The figure shows the form of the stream through Råå as it were around the year of 1800. The material is perforated metal, powder-lacquered in a dark grey-blueish tone, and is made with the help of Sånna Smide in Kvidinge.
During the night time, there is a silhouette of light tracing the left side of the figure. Strings of LED lights between the perforated metal and the figure are installed by Råå Elektriska.

More images in day light:

Here is an article in Kunsten.nu about the exhibition.

Opening on Saturday February 22nd between 6-9 pm. Open one day only on Sunday 23rd 12 am – 5 pm.

Welcome to Glasgow Project Room in Glasgow!

Welcome!

The commission was won by David Svensson.

Here the prototype is placed in direct light, which makes the more transparent nature of the plexiglass thread forward.

Underneath is an image of the reflections given by the prototype when direct light bounces off the material surfaces onto a shaded wall.

During 2013, I was in charge of the project Artotekare for Region Skåne (the municipality of Skane) which included activating the lending of art works in the various art libraries – Artoteken – to the separate hospital rooms for children and youngsters. The activity took place in the children’s and youth wards at the University Hospitals in Helsingborg, Kristianstad, Lund and Malmö within the Region Skåne in the South of Sweden.

The project also included creative workshops with the patients and their families. In these workshops, my art piece “Vessel of Reflection” – part of Artoteket – was shown as inspiration for the patients to make their own mobiles out of CD:s.

In Enebyberg, in the northern area of Stockholm, a giant sundial was built partly from a branch from an apple tree, which was coated in different blue colours together with engaged family members of the household and placed outside the main window of their living room. Indoors, the window was clothed in a plastic material made out of minuscule circular tubes, which reflected direct sun light by day as well as an artificial LED light string (programmable iColor Flex IMX) by night.

The project has received funding from the Foundation of Innovative Culture, which serves under the department of Culture in Stockholm, Sweden.

The opening brought stunning sun light and interesting discussions with a lot of nice people; friends and neighbours of the persons in the household.