The Film Club: This World is Not My Own

In collaboration with Folkets Bio, the Film Club is showing the documentary “This World is Not My Own”, portraying the American artist Nellie Mae Rowe and her life in 20th-century USA. It reflects segregation and racism in the US, but also the civil rights movement in Atlanta. Friends, relatives and others who knew Nellie Mae Rowe are interviewed in the documentary. The artist herself also appears in animated sequences.

The evening starts with drinks, and after the screening the film’s director Petter Ringbom talks to Moderna Museet’s Camilla Carlberg.

Nellie Mae Rowe

Nellie Mae Rowe (1900–1982) is one of the USA’s finest folk artists. She grew up in a farming family with ten siblings in Georgia. As a young girl, she loved to paint, but her family was poor and everyone had to work in the fields to contribute to their livelihood.

At 16, she ran away from home, frustrated over not being allowed to choose her own life. She married and worked as a housekeeper in various families, which she later portrayed in her art. After being widowed twice, she began exploring her talent as an artist.

Her house and backyard were transformed into her first art installation, with paintings, drawings and sculptures made of discarded materials, such as chewing gum and old kitchen utensils.