STOCKHOLM.- In 2018, it is once again time for the Moderna Exhibition - Moderna Museet’s quadrennial survey of the Swedish art scene. This time, the mission goes to Joa Ljungberg, Santiago Mostyn and Lawen Mohtadi, who will research Swedish contemporary art and present their findings in an exhibition that opens at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in autumn 2018.

“We are looking forward to the 2018 edition of the Moderna Exhibition, which will give us new perspectives on Swedish art today. Every four years, Moderna Museet highlights the most interesting and characteristic oeuvres on the contemporary art scene. It is with great expectations that we now hand over this assignment to the Museum’s curator Joa Ljungberg, in association with the editor and author Lawen Mohtadi and the artist Santiago Mostyn. What is essential to Swedish art today, and how can we understand the contemporary regional and national perspectives? These are a few key issues of our time that the curatorial team will try to answer,” say Daniel Birnbaum, director, and Ann-Sofi Noring, co-director of Moderna Museet

The Moderna Exhibition 2018 will be the 4th edition of the event. Previous editions opened in 2006, 2010 and 2014.

The curatorial team of the Moderna Exhibition 2018:

Lawen Mohtadi (b. 1978, Stockholm) is a writer, documentary filmmaker and editor. For the past ten years, Mohtadi has been researching the life and work of Swedish-Roma civil rights activist Katarina Taikon. In 2012, Mohtadi published Den dag jag blir fri (The Day I Will Be Free), the first biography of Katarina Taikon. Three years later, the book became a feature film, co-written and co-directed by Mohtadi. Her research also resulted in public seminars at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, a national book tour, talks in Berlin, New York and Washington DC, and a photo exhibition at Moderna Museet, co-curated with Fredrik Liew.

Mohtadi has worked as a journalist and critic for major Swedish media, including Sveriges Radio, Dagens Nyheter and Expressen. She was the editor in chief of the feminist magazine Bang, founding editor of the cultural magazine Slut, and co-edited the anthology Rasismen i Sverige (Racism in Sweden).

She is currently Senior Editor for non-fiction at the Natur & Kultur publishing house.

Santiago Mostyn (b. 1981, San Francisco) is a Stockholm-based artist with a practice founded on politically resonant personal histories. His prints, videos, sculptures, and performances challenge established social norms by giving visibility to cultural outsidership.

Mostyn, a graduate of Yale University, Städelschule in Frankfurt, and the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, and has exhibited internationally at venues including Kunst-Werke, Berlin (2008); Turner Contemporary in Kent (2011); Malmö Konsthall (2013); Kunsthall Stavanger (2014); and Moderna Museet in Malmö (2015) and Stockholm (2016). In 2016, he created a large-scale commissioned work for the Public Art Agency Sweden; in autumn 2017, he will feature in the 9th edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Interview Magazine, BBC Radio, and Creative Time Reports, among others.

Joa Ljungberg (b. 1976, Uppsala) is a curator at Moderna Museet Malmö. She recently completed a project entitled THE NEW HUMAN, which explored, through contemporary art, our human condition in a rapidly changing world. The project was manifested in three international group exhibitions: You and I in Global Wonderland (2015), Knock, Knock, Is Anyone Home? (2016), and, finally, The New Human (2016-17). Ljungberg has also curated several solo exhibitions: The Social with Annika Eriksson, To What I Might Become with Ursula Mayer, Rip Image with Tala Madani (in collaboration with Andreas Nilsson), Plegaria Muda with Doris Salcedo, The Girl, The Monster and The Goddess with Niki de Saint Phalle, and Europe will be stunned with Yael Bartana, among others.

In 2004–2008, Ljungberg worked at the Public Art Agency Sweden, where she curated projects with the artists Jenny Holzer, Julia Peirone, Marjetica Potrc, Franz Ackermann, among others. She has also been the artistic director (together with Edi Muka) for the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art 2007: Rethinking Dissent, and co-director and curator (again with Edi Muka) for the Tirana International Contemporary Art Biennial 2009: The Symbolic Efficiency of the Frame.

She studied History of Art at Uppsala University and University of Warwick (ENG), and graduated as MA in Creative Curating from Goldsmith College, University of London (ENG).