The New Beauty Council

The New Beauty Council (NBC) is a new form of organisation that comes in many guises. It is an examining activity, related to that of the researcher, posing challenging questions about architecture. It is also an organisation that seeks to influence the planning and politics behind the urban landscape concretely and constructively by conducting a dialogue and negotiating with those who decide what the city will look like. The NBC is also, primarily, an art project, staging situation such as open discussions, city walks and performances, to give new perspectives on our built environment.

The experiments with enactments, costume changes and disguises, open the way for shifts in identities and roles, and for temporary pockets of fiction in the midst of reality. Using the carnival concept as its artistic strategy, the NBC inscribes itself in the tradition where artists over the second half of the 20th century used their own bodies as a tool, and public space as an arena for examining and challenging the world.

The NBC reminds us that aesthetics is politics, that disguise is power, and that both can be used or misused when our physical surroundings are designed. It also demonstrates that small shifts in perspective can alter the city before our very eyes, and give it a new costume that can be appreciated by more people.

For The Moderna Exhibition, the New Beauty Council has invited representatives from various fields – art historians, architects,psychologists and marketing managers – to an open discussion about the public domain and the power of the visual.

Annika Enqvist

Born 1975 i Stockholm
Lives and works in Stockholm

Education

2009 Konstfack/University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm
1999 Stockholms universitet/Stockholm University, Stockholm

Thérèse Kristiansson

Born 1981 in Stockholm
Lives and works in Stockholm

Education

2009 Konstfack/University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm
2006 Arkitekturskolan, KTH /Royal Institute of Architecture, Stockholm
2003 Stockholms universitet/Stockholm University, Stockholm

The New Beauty Council

Selected solo exhibitions

2009 Safe Slut – A Carnival through Valla Torg, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow [UK]; Studio 44, Stockholm; LaDIY fest Berlin [DE]
2009 Ändrade Perspektiv, Stockholms Stadmuseum, Stockholm
2008 To Launch an Institution – The Sotry and Idea behind NBC, Gävle Konstcentrum, Gävle

Selected group exhibitions

2010 Knitting House, Husby Konsthall, Stockholm
2010 Att hitta hem, Konstfrämjandet, Stockholm
2009 Osynliga Rum – Kroppar som skapar rum och rum som skapar kroppar, Kulturfestivalen, Stockholms Stadsmuseum, Stockholm

Selected bibliography

Elisabeth Näslund, ”Allas rätt till rummet”, Arkitekten, mars/March 2010.
Tirdad Zolghadr, ”Top Ten”, Artforum, January 2010.
Erik Laquist, ”Osynliga rum: Stadsvandring som performance”, Dagens Nyheter, 2009-03-08.

www.newbeautycouncil.org