Theresa Traore Dahlberg

Overview

Theresa Traore Dahlberg is a visual artist and filmmaker who formulates engaging and complex narratives through installation, sculpture, photography and film. Her sculptural works often take a point of departure in the material itself, both as a physical material and as a container of histories, ideas and notions. The artist pays close attention to the production process, working conditions, workers’ identities and personal stories - creating art that reflects the complexity of class, women's roles and post-colonialism. She also examines value shifting on account of industrial and technological developments, as well as their environmental impact on a local and global level. Traore Dahlberg draws from her own experience of being anchored in two sociopolitical cultures, Sweden and Burkina Faso.

Her installations, glass works and bronze sculptures result from various historically and personally charged materials that have been altered through different processes and thus become imbued with new meanings. More specifically, this can entail hand-spun cotton yarns or industrially produced circuit boards being melted and fused into glass; creating new purpose for the discarded. Inspired by Science Fiction, Futurism and African folktales, Traore Dahlberg’s bronze sculptures of birds and hares instead play with visions of alternative futures and new sociopolitical structures.

Theresa Traore Dahlberg (b.1983 in Värnamo, Sweden) resides and works in Stockholm, Sweden. She studied 16 mm experimental film at the New School in New York and the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 2017, she graduated with a Master of Fine Art from The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. She participated in the group exhibition Rock my Soul II, curated by Isaac Julien and presented in Eva Livijn’s house-gallery in Stockholm (2022). Traore Dahlberg has also had several solo exhibitions, including at Kalmar Konstmuseum, Sweden (2021), Institut Suédois, Paris (2019) and Musée National du Burkina Faso (2019). In 2019, she received Beckers Art Award, which entailed two extensive solo exhibitions at Färgfabriken, Stockholm and Höganäs Museum, Höganäs, Sweden.

Traore Dahlberg has been awarded the Tempo Documentary Short Award for her film The Ambassador’s Wife (2018), which was also shown at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Berlin Critics’ Week, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival. This film was likewise included in the program for Artist Films International and was as such exhibited at Bonniers Konsthall, Whitechapel Gallery, Hammer Museum, Para/Site Art Space, Ballroom Marfa, and Istanbul Modern. Her first film, Taxi Sisters (2011), portrayed the everyday life of a Senegalese female taxi driver, and her first feature-length documentary, Ouaga Girls (2017), depicted the everyday life of a group of teenage girls becoming car mechanics in Burkina Faso. To this day, these films are widely shown internationally.

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