TEXTS
On How to Stand
2025-2026
by Evelina Hägglund
Exit From Within
2025-2026
Exhibition text by Evelina Hägglund
I Dreamt I Was the Ground
2023-2024
Extract from my diary
August, 2023
ANOTHER KNOWLEDGE IS POSSIBLE
Goldsmiths MFA thesis, 2021
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“19.03.2024. The Thunder Bottle
I have found a thunder bottle; a barometer. It indicates air pressure and forecasts the weather. When the water in the body of the bottle rises into the spout, the pressure is low, indicating bad weather. Conversely, when it drops, it shows high pressure. The thunder bottle, which renders visible something as elusive as air pressure, reminds me of an aspect of my practice that is constantly present but challenging to articulate: pressure. The inner: all my feelings. The pressure, the outer: the weather, time, politics, nature, culture. How I in the studio work with transfer of pressure. How I seethe from within and pour lines on canvas. How I rush into the materials.
My interior pressure in relation to my external environment results in metal sculptures, works in clay, cement, acrylic, charcoal, graphite, rust and dust. Continuously, I manifest what I would have liked to write and say if I could, instead in physical, material form. I have no choice but to prioritize physicality over words; over representation. I have always made art because there is so much I cannot say. Sometimes the process is more violent than I wish. I am looking to control myself.
I work with my breathing, with my movements, but I so often loose control. I overflow from within; pressure seeps out of my body, my arms and hands. I do not hide the outcomes. I want to be honest. I want to show my real experience of being alive. I have to deal with the pressure inside and outside of me. This is why I work. This is why I keep on working.” Evelina Hägglund, 2024
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”In Exit From Within, Evelina Hägglund examines pressure as a material and embodied condition. The exhibition centres on large-scale graphite drawings on hessian. The coarse weave resists the hand; graphite is pressed repeatedly into the surface, building density through friction and insistence. Rather than producing images in a conventional sense, the works accumulate weight. What emerges is not illustration, but trace. Across the drawings, lines gather and thicken, often concentrating toward the centre of the compositions. The surfaces appear worked from within, as if internal force had gradually insisted on form. Tension is sustained rather than resolved. Balance is present, but never secure.
The physicality of the process remains visible. Repetition leaves residue. Pressure leaves marks. The surface carries evidence of duration—of time spent negotiating resistance.
Sculptures in plaster, metal and hessian extend this inquiry into three dimensions. Leaning structures, suspended gestures and precarious alignments echo the instability present in the drawings. Across media, the body functions as both reference and measure: a site where weight is borne, adjusted and redistributed.
Whether approached as an “exit from within” or as a reflection on how to stand, the exhibition addresses the translation of internal states into material form. It considers what happens when tension is not suppressed but worked through—when density becomes structure and instability becomes a condition to inhabit rather than overcome.
Evelina Hägglund (b. 1992, Stockholm) works between sculpture and large-scale drawing. Her practice centres on the body as a site of weight, resistance and translation—a place where internal states meet material conditions. Working primarily with graphite on hessian, alongside plaster, metal and other structurally demanding materials, Hägglund approaches making as a sustained physical negotiation. The coarse weave of the hessian resists the hand; graphite is pressed repeatedly into its fibres, building density through friction and accumulation. Repetition is not a stylistic device but a method. Through insistence, the surface begins to carry weight. Across her work, balance is never treated as a stable condition. Leaning structures, suspended gestures and densely worked planes suggest that equilibrium is temporary and continuously adjusted. Rather than representing experience, Hägglund’s works register it materially—through pressure, strain and duration. Language plays a secondary role in her practice. Hägglund is particularly interested in states of wordlessness, where meaning is carried by posture, tension and embodied response rather than articulated through narrative. The body functions both as boundary and medium: it absorbs external forces while simultaneously generating internal pressure. Her works translate this condition into matter.” Ditte Lauridsen, 2026
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”On his philosophy of art, the American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth argued that ’Any traces of the artist’s hand should be eliminated from production so that ideas may be expressed directly.’ In Swedish artist Evelina Hägglund’s practice, the idea of such an artificial divide between body and mind is senseless; ’I believe that by including my very hands, by incorporating me as a maker in the work, I am in a much more honest position to express an idea. Ideas are not separate from the body.’
Hägglund’s practice explores the interplay between body, matter, and language. She is interested in material expressions that goes beyond what can be articulated in language – attempting to create an output which exists outside of linguistic category. Using materials such as metal, clay, cement, graphite and canvas, Hägglund meticulously and expressively produces works that are at the same time highly personal and interwoven with its surroundings and the outside world. Correspondingly, it is simultanously a philosophical and internal endeavour as much as it is political and expressing something crucial about the globalised world in which we live.” Live Drønen, 2025
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Yves Scherer in conversation with Evelina Hägglund
Interview with Yves Scherer, 2024
SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED,GLADLY BEYOND —A CONVERSATION WITH EVELINA HÄGGLUND AND MINH LAN TRAN
Interview with Rhiannon Harper, 2022