20 years of international art events

An onion in Hermelinsparken, shaped from a block of snow taller than a person.

For several months, I passed by on my bike and was fascinated by how it kept its onion shape as it melted and shrank in the spring sun. The other snow sculptures had eroded into beautiful unrecognizability. But the onion still looked like an onion. By April, it was no bigger than a tulip bulb—but still an onion. It gave me a lot to think about—melting, impermanence, and the onion as a life-preserving form.

Kilen Art Group has existed for 20 years. How much of its original form remains? Could it be compared to an onion—an onion that doesn’t shrink, but grows? With its original form, original idea, still intact.

It started at the art program at Sunderby Folkhögskola, where Ricky Sandberg, Dan Lestander, Jan-Erik Falk, and Maria Lundström felt they worked well together and shared the same perspective on art in society.

“We discussed, we misunderstood each other, our ideas changed. We went to Japan and came to a festival where people created art out of drift ice along the beaches. Bonfires, grills, oysters, large Japanese drums—the whole community in motion. We felt we wanted to do something similar in Luleå, but from our own spirit and our own conditions. Everyone who lives here has a relationship to snow and ice, and meeting the public outdoors would be much easier than doing so in art halls and galleries.”

The first international festival, ARcTic Festival Luleå as it was called then, was held in 1991. Twenty artists participated and were given simple tools and compacted snow blocks measuring 3 x 3 x 3 meters. The only figurative work that year was a Buddha figure made by a Chinese artist. Everything else was abstract forms. How would people react? And what would happen if someone managed to create something so powerful and moving that people started to cry? What happens to tears in the freezing winter? That was tested in the performance “The Impossible Love Between Mr. Fire and Miss Snowflake.” Neither Dan nor Ricky remembers any tears. Just the relaxed, familiar atmosphere and the curiosity of the visitors.

Many of us have stood there on Gültzauudden, shivering and stomping our feet, discussing what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is art and what is not. Perhaps some thresholds have melted over these winters, and some who never dreamed of entering an art hall or gallery have taken that step. Not to mention all the children and educators who, through daycare and schools, have worked with winter as a theme.

As the years passed, the boundaries set by square snow blocks were broken, and the winter biennials eventually featured installations, conceptual art, land art, and video works. Anything was possible, as long as it could be described as “winter-based art.”

The first summer biennial was held in 2003. Applications now come from all over the world. Here, the artists meet not only each other and everyone who works hard to help realize their visions. There is also a curious audience. Each biennial usually draws around 25,000 visitors. The more than 700 artists who have come here over the years have become great ambassadors for Norrbotten, says Ricky.

The art biennials have carried many strong themes, and the public has become increasingly involved. “Passion: an obstacle or a driving force for humanity?” was the question posed in the summer of 2007. That year, visitors could take part in Lisa Bjorne’s artwork “Desconocida Unknown Ukjent.” One beautiful June evening in the art hall, we sat quietly and embroidered women’s names on small white fabric pieces—the names of some of the more than four hundred women who were raped, disappeared, or murdered in the horrific border town between Mexico and the USA called Juarez.

Two years later, the theme was Risk, and Kilen once again posed an open question to its audience. Is it the ability to make mistakes, errors, and failures that makes us human? That summer, artist Christian Sievers parked a police car with its blue lights flashing in front of the Culture House. Visitors could also try to climb Caglar Uzun’s wide staircase with completely asymmetric and impossible steps. And those who dared could let themselves be hypnotized in Pablo Sigg’s completely white room, put words to their inner images, and maybe glimpse something of the mystery of creation.

“You could say that Kilen itself is an art project, and that all the individual parts over the years become one large artwork,” says Dan. “Perhaps we’re helping to create slightly more thoughtful citizens in a democracy?”

“We want to have a dialogue with the present, and we found a path we still believe in. Our strength is that we’ve never worked as a homogeneous group but have constantly formed new constellations based on the projects we’re working on—most recently in the summer of 2010, with the acclaimed initiative at Havremagasinet in Boden. Kilen Art Group now also includes Pilar de Burgos and Carlos Segovia, and over many years Anja Persson and Sara Edström have worked with us as well. We are like an orchestra, where every instrument matters.”

I think of that melting ice onion in the museum park. Is it possible that flowers might bloom from ice onions?

—Ann-Katrin Tideström, 2011