Artist Statement
When I moved from Sweden to the United States at the age of eight, I was dropped into an English-speaking classroom with all the confidence of a Viking without a map. Television became my first teacher — Happy Days and The Muppets my tutors — though not without spectacular missteps that regularly landed me in the “timeout room.”
In those quiet hours of exile, I discovered art. Armed with library books filled with Renaissance and mythological imagery, I drew obsessively on whatever paper was at hand. Even then, myth and mischief became the twin pillars of my creative language.
That playful, mythic sensibility continues to shape my work today. Whether through photography, jewelry design, animation, or game design, I explore the collision between personal history, storytelling, and cultural mythology. My early photographic work — rooted in Swedish folklore and Norse myth — features my parents as both subjects and collaborators. Through them, I rediscovered the rituals of play that connect generations: an exploration of memory, identity, and the tender humor of growing old together.
My practice has since expanded into digital worlds, interactive narratives, and time-based media. My recent animations and games are modern mythologies — dark, playful, and morally complex. They invite viewers to laugh, reflect, and sometimes squirm, mirroring the absurdity and vulnerability of being human.
Born in Enköping, Sweden, I am now Professor and Head of the Department of Visual Arts and Design at Tarleton State University, part of the Texas A&M University System, where I continue to merge traditional storytelling with digital craft. My work has been exhibited and screened internationally — in Sweden, Japan, China, Australia, Germany, the United States, and beyond — featured in numerous publications, and produced commercially for Tanqueray Gin as part of the Night Chicago project.
At its heart, my practice remains deeply personal. Through photography, jewelry, and digital worlds, I create spaces to remember, to play, and to reflect — echoing the stories once whispered by my ancestors and retold at family tables across generations.