Paperback, colour and black and white illustrations,183 pages, W160mm x H220mm
This book is a survey of Sofia Hultén’s practice between 2001 and
2007. Born in Stockholm in 1972, Sofia Hultén moved to Birmingham as a
child. Although she trained as a sculptor, graduating from Sheffield
Hallam University in 1995, the artist now works with video, photography
and objects.
Hultén’s video works document the artist undertaking a series of
seemingly futile or absurd tasks such as repeatedly destroying and
repairing objects, finding hiding places within an office and
disguising herself amongst street furniture. Her artworks involve a
preoccupation with the relationship between human beings and the object
world.
Hultén’s work is at once rigorously produced and modestly homemade –
a combination of meticulousness and makeshift ingenuity. It is engaging
through its familiarity and suspense. Her characters are purposeful in
their waiting and the artist invites us to wait with them, filling in
time with a kind of activity that inspires imaginative thought. Instead
of narrative closures, we enjoy the open endings.