Edefalk has distinguished herself as a pioneering artist who continually takes inspiration from history, memory, and experience, transforming these modalities into deeply spiritual works that connect to nature, light, and her imagination. Through the artist’s chosen mediums, namely drawing, painting, sculpture, and film, Edefalk forms visual representations of complex, indescribable, or everyday phenomena through the materials she moulds and projects. For the series of watercolours and drawings, the artist uses the framework of a years-long road trip to places such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, especially Sicily including Lampedusa, Wales and different locations in Sweden while living in Germany. Working in collaboration with the botanist Anders Tehler, these works carefully catalogs the specimens, attributes, and colours of each plant she encounters growing by the shores and seashores of Europe with the exacting research of a scientist or anthropologist. Delicate blossoming flowers, sturdy grasses, sometimes small insects that are ‘visiting’ the watercolour paper during the work and textured leaves are documented with both rigorous attention to detail and artistic expressiveness in how forms overlap and the subtle watercolours are applied to each surface. The artist’s interest in durational work is ever present and particularly significant with this series: often working on a series for years or decades, Edefalk demonstrates determination in her commitment to a project, as well as an embrasure of the inevitable fluidity in the process. Like a biologist, Edefalk’s hypothesis and conclusions are all part of her investigations into an idea. The tangible artiefacts she leaves behind from these various excursions offer a wondrous and curious suite of carefully executed memories of the history of the earth and personal journey.

Accompanying the suite of drawings, Edefalk also includes two films in the exhibition. The first film is a digital composition sourced from diapositive slide photographs the artist took while on her travels as a way of further cataloging the sites and times of her journeys and discoveries. Sites that may not longer. This documentary-style film offers another portal through which the artist studies the world around her work. This work also adds another layer to the durational quality of her practice through this long-form portrayal of how she memorialises her experiences and research. The second film depicts a woman whistling in call and response with the birds. Through both the works on paper and films, this installation demonstrates the multifacetedness of her expansive approach to art and image making, appreciation for the inherent structure of forms and ideas, and a lifelong appreciation for experiencing and connecting to nature.

Cecilia Edefalk was born in Norrköping and currently lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2020, her work was the subject of a major retrospective at Norrköping Museum of Art and in 2016 at Prins EugensWaldmarsudde, Stockholm. She has had significant museum exhibitions around the world at institutions suchas Moderna Museet, Stockholm; BAMPFA, Berkeley Art Museum; Crystal Palace, Stockholm; Parasol unit,London; The Art Institute of Chicago; Malmö Konstmuseum; Lunds Konsthall, Sweden, NordiskaAkvarellmuseet, Sweden; Kunsthalle Kiel, Germany; and Kunsthalle Bern. Her work has appeared in groupshows, including Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Moderna Museet, Malmö; Documenta 11, Kassel; the 22nd SãoPaolo Biennial; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art,Hartford; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco;and Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris. Her work was the subject of a solo exhibition, Heavens, at Lund Cathedral, Lund, Sweden, on view from July 16–August 21, 2022. She is currently working on apublic art commission for the Swedish State at Rosenbad in Stockholm produced by Art Agency Sweden, tobe unveiled later this year.