Press materials

Moki Cherry – A Journey Eternal

23.9 2023 – 3.3 2024
Curators: Elisabeth Millqvist and Andreas Nilsson
The exhibition will be on display in the galleries on Floor 2

Moki Cherry’s colorful art unites painting, sculpture, textiles, and scenography. Everyday life and art are linked together; a musical instrument case forms the base for a painting, bags for packing are reworked into textile collages, and a philosophy with nature at the center is formulated in drawings. Moki Cherry herself commented on this transgressive approach with the description “the stage is a home, and the home is a stage.”

Her art could be included as an element of concerts in Paris, Copenhagen, or the Scanian countryside. By presenting her art outside of art galleries and theater stages, in places such as her own home, Moki Cherry dissolved hierarchies between public and private and between creator and viewer. Children, her own and others’, were both observers and collaborators.

– Moki Cherry’s multifaceted art continues to fascinate and to be relevant. Her brilliantly-colored idiom, engagement in her surroundings, how she encouraged participation and sought ways to be a parent and an artist at the same time. She shifted from the motto to ‘make a more beautiful world’ as a teenager to ‘life is my artwork’,” describe the exhibition’s curators Elisabeth Millqvist and Andreas Nilsson.

Moki Cherry was a practicing Buddhist for the better part of the 1970s, and Buddhist philosophy had a life-long impact on her. Her work was influenced by art and cultural histories as well as spiritual movements from both Western and Eastern traditions. Her extensive travels and international collaborations also inspired her work. The result is a multi-layered idiom inhabited by human and non-human creatures. Later works exhibit traces of Cubism and more abstract forms.

Monika Marianne Karlsson (1943-2009), better known by the name Moki Cherry, was born in Koler in Norrbotten. She grew up in Skåne and moved to Stockholm in 1962 to study fashion. In 1970, she moved with her family to Tågarp in northern Skåne and transformed a former school into the family’s home, which also served as a gathering place centered around music, theater, children’s activities, and art. With her husband, jazz musician Don Cherry, she established Organic Music Society (1966-1977). She enthusiastically describes their shared vision as the biggest thing to happen to the art scene since the Russian Ballet (1909-1929), a comparison that underscores their goal of integrated, interdisciplinary art (Gesamtkunstwerk) and a fusion of artistic genres. From the late 1970s, she split her time between Tågarp and New York.

Moki Cherry has a long history with Moderna Museet. In 1971, she and Don Cherry participated in the exhibition “Utopias and Visions 1871-1981”, where they were given the opportunity to create a total installation–a dynamic, living environment where music, art, and everyday life went on simultaneously. Moderna Museet Malmö’s exhibition title, “A Journey Eternal”, is taken from the publication that was produced in 1971. These are the last words in a meandering text by Moki Cherry in which she puts words to her holistic worldview.

Moderna Museet in Stockholm presented an exhibition with Moki Cherry in 2016. Since then, interest in her art has only increased, with several presentations in the USA; in 2021, a comprehensive publication by Blank Forms, New York features both Moki and Don Cherry with a particular focus on the boundary-crossing work that occurred under the name Organic Music. The exhibition at Moderna Museet Malmö also coincides with the 50-year anniversary of Don Cherry’s album Organic Music Society, for which Moki Cherry designed the album cover.

“A Journey Eternal” is the most comprehensive presentation of Moki Cherry’s work to date and gives a broad picture of her oeuvre–from clothing, a hybrid of painting and textile applications, and her vision of interdisciplinary artwork and depictions of home and surroundings to activities intended for children. As an observation of the last element, this exhibition also includes a creative workshop.

Moki Cherry is also the subject of a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and is a part of a group exhibition at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Previous exhibitions include Malmö Konstmuseum (2018), and Marabouparken, Stockholm (2016); Landskrona Konsthall (2008), and solo exhibitions at Galleri Ping Pong, Malmö (1997) and Kristianstads Länsmuseum (1986). Internationally, her work has been shown at such institutions as Argos in Brussels (2022), Saint Peter’s Church in New York (1992), LAX 814 in Los Angeles (1979), and Centre Beaubourg Pompidou in Paris (1974).

Press viewing: Thursday, September 21 at 10.00 at Moderna Museet Malmö with curators Elisabeth Millqvist and Andreas Nilsson.

RSVP on or before September 17 to Alexandra Giertz at a.giertz@modernamuseet.se. The press viewing is intended for journalists and writers. We request that, upon RSVP, you provide the name of the newspaper or other medium for which you write.

If you have questions or would like additional information, please contact Alexandra Giertz, Communication Manager at Moderna Museet Malmö, at a.giertz@modernamuseet.se or +46 734228739.

VERNISSAGE WITH CONCERTS AND DJ:S DURING MALMÖ GALLERY WEEKEND

Friday, September 22
18.00 – 23.00
Free admission

During the vernissage, five musicians, several of them with close connections to Moki Cherry, will join together in performance at the museum’s loading dock.

On stage: Christer Bothén (donso n’goni and bass clarinet), Mats Gustafsson (saxophone), Goran Kajfes (trumpet), Naima Karlsson (piano), and Ana Ruíz (piano). During the evening, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee will award its major music fellowship.

In the museum’s café, having once upon a time helped celebrate the museum’s opening, former record label friends Emil Broomé and DJ Tias are reunited behind the turntables with an eclectic set.

Café:
18.00 – 23.00
DJs: Emil Broomé & DJ Tias

Pressrelease Monica Sjöö The Great Cosmic Mother

If you like to recieve the exhibition catalogue (PDF) via e-mail, please contact us at: press@modernamuseet.se

Curators: Jo Widoff, Moderna Museet and Amy Budd, Modern Art Oxford

“Monica Sjöö – The Great Cosmic Mother” is organized in partnership with Modern Art Oxford, where it will be on view 18 November 2023–25 February 2024.

Exhibitions in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Kiel have attracted broad audiences eager to explore this long-forgotten artist and have established a place for her in the history of twentieth-century art. However, these shows focused primarily on Laserstein’s work from the 1920s to the beginning of the 1930s—the period before she was forced to leave Germany and emigrated to Sweden. “A Divided Life” focuses as much on the multifaceted works she created in exile in Sweden as it does on those she made before leaving Germany.

Lotte Laserstein’s career as an artist began in Berlin in the 1920s. After graduating from the Academy of Arts there in 1927—as one of the first women to earn a degree—she quickly succeeded in making a name for herself in the city’s art scene. Laserstein captured the spirit of an era in scenes from her studio and portraits of cosmopolitan, emancipated women. At first glance, her work appears to share some of the characteristics of the movement known as the New Objectivity. But Laserstein did not exaggerate or caricature—instead, her work reveals an intimate realism that weaves together painting tradition with contemporary themes. The paintings she executed in Berlin, in which she depicts her life as an artist and shows us the many sides of the Weimar Republic’s modern “new woman,” are surprisingly current even today, particularly in light of the ongoing discussions around gender identity and queerness.

The success predicted for Lotte Laserstein and ascribed to her by German art critics in the 1920s ended abruptly in 1933 when the Nazis seized power. As a Jew, Laserstein was increasingly excluded from the public art world. Thanks to an invitation to show her work at the Galerie Moderne in Stockholm in 1937, she was able to get out of Germany with some of her most important works and come to Sweden, where she would spend the greater part of her working life. In Sweden, Laserstein was able to build a new life for herself as a portrait and landscape painter.

“For five decades, Laserstein produced an extremely comprehensive, thematic, and stylistically multifaceted collection of works that has only partially come to light in earlier shows,” say the exhibition’s curators, Iris Müller-Westermann and Anna-Carola Krausse.
“In our exhibition, we ascribe to this period of Laserstein’s life and work the same status as the time she lived in Berlin. Through her representational commissioned portraits, expressive self-portraits, moving depictions of other emigrants, and landscapes and urban scenes, it is possible to discern what living in exile was like. Laserstein’s Swedish work raises questions about what it means to lose one’s own cultural and social milieu and be forced to establish roots in a new society. Against the backdrop of today’s global migration patterns, the works Laserstein created while in exile in Sweden provide an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue around these issues.”

Although Laserstein was able to complete a great many important portraits on commission—for clients that included well-known aristocrats, politicians, business leaders, and cultural figures—and although she was still able to make a living as an artist, her recognition in the Swedish art scene remained limited. It is likely that her unwavering commitment to realism during post-war decades dominated by abstraction played a role in preventing her from receiving a larger breakthrough in Sweden.

Lotte Laserstein described her life and her career with the words “My rescue to Sweden broke my life in two.” This division has shaped the structure of the exhibition. The first part is devoted to the artist’s time in Berlin, with key works that illuminate her artistic beginnings and early successes in the Weimar Republic. The second part features Laserstein’s years in Sweden.

“Lotte Laserstein: A Divided Life” will be on view at Moderna Museet Malmö from May 6 through October 1, 2023. The exhibition will then move on to Moderna Museet in Stockholm from November 11 through April 14, 2024.

Curators: Iris Müller-Westermann, formerly Museum Director of Moderna Museet Malmö and now Senior Curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Anna-Carola Krausse, an art historian and Laserstein expert based in Berlin.

Support for this exhibition is provided by Mannheimer Swartling, the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, and the Jacob Wallenberg Foundation. We thank also the Lotte Laserstein Exhibition Circle.

For more information, please contact: Alexandra Giertz, Communication Manager
mob: 0734-228739
press.malmo@modernamuseet.se

Press preview at both Moderna Museet Malmö and Malmö Konstmuseum on Thursday, 4 May

On 4 May, Moderna Museet and Malmö Konstmuseum are inviting members of the press to a preview for the two upcoming exhibitions. The press event begins at Moderna Museet with a preview of the exhibition “Lotte Laserstein: A Divided Life” and continues later at Malmö Konstmuseum with a preview of the exhibition “Tal R & Mamma Andersson – Around Hill”. Transportation between the museums will be offered to journalists who wish to attend both presentations.

At 10.00 – Press preview at Moderna Museet Malmö for the exhibition “Lotte Laserstein – A Divided Life” attended by curators Dr. Iris Müller-Westermann and Dr. Anna Carola Krausse and by Museum Director Elisabeth Millqvist.

At 11.30 – Transport to Malmö Art Museum.

At 12.00 – Press preview at Malmö Konstmuseum for the exhibition in the presence of the artists Karin Mamma Andersson, Tal R. Museum Director Kirse Junge-Stevnsborg, and curator Marcus Pompeius will be in attendance.

Applications for admission to the press preview must be submitted no later than 2 May to Alexandra Giertz at a.giertz@modernamuseet.se or Disa Torbjörnsdottir (Malmö Art Museum) at disa.torbjornsdottir@malmo.se.

Indicate whether you wish to attend both press previews or only one of them and whether you would like transportation from Moderna Museet Malmö to Malmö Konstmuseum. The press preview is for journalists or writers who have been assigned to report on the exhibitions. We request that you indicate in which newspaper or other media organization you write for.