Veckans Fråga: A proposal for a major new public artwork in Stockholm 2016.
Mixed media 100 × 120 × 140cm
Exhibited at the gallery Kungstensgatan 27 in Stockholm until November 2016.
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When I first moved to Stockholm in 2015, I couldn’t shake the impression that the Royal Palace, in the middle of the city, looked to me like a squat, cubic, headless sphinx. I began a lifelong mission to replace its missing head — starting with making this proposal and maquette, exhibited at the gallery Kungstensgatan 27 in the autumn of 2016. This is what I said about it at the time:
“I want to replace the Stockholm Royal Palace’s (clearly missing) sphinx head. This installation was triggered by a visual déja-vu of architectural form. It began as an immigrant’s inescapable desire to commit a provocative, disrespectful and absurd intervention, but gathers an unexpected depth and ambiguity the longer it lingers in the mind. Once seen, this collage of the monumental can never be unseen. Until this foolishly ambitious project is realised, Stockholm’s skyline will forever seem incomplete, there will be a vast absence in its centre.”
In the final week of the installation a small fire was lit (deliberately?) in one of the palace’s wings. The confluence quickly spread, increasing in size and ferocity daily, until the palace was completely engulfed in flames, damaged beyond repair.
Good photos by Matti Östling / Fire photos by me.
