Theresa Traore Dahlberg: Anything Can Become Anything

Theresa Traore Dahlberg says she always needed to collect, but starting art school and becoming a mother made her take the time to go further and look at what she collected from different angles. Stones, fabrics, photos, metal – she brings them home and finds a place for them in her works. Anything can become anything if you put the time into it and you stay with it,” says the artist, who grew up between Sweden and Burkina Faso and works across sculpture, installation, and documentary film. Her films, among them Ouaga Girls and The Ambassador’s Wife, have screened at Toronto, Berlin, and the Hammer Museum; her sculptures transform decommissioned industrial materials into what she calls Lings: new beings emerging from old, sometimes violent, matter. Traore Dahlberg is currently one of eight artists in Earthly Bodies Born of Love at Verket, the historic ironworks in Avesta, curated by Karolina Aastrup and Sona Stepanyan and on display until 20 September 2026. She is also at work on a major public commission in Gothenburg, due in 2029.