VERKLIGHETEN is an artist-run gallery and projectroom in Umea, northern Sweden. (“Verkligheten” means REALITY in Swedish.) The 6 artists that started Verkligheten in 2001 did so in order to survive mentally as artists in Umea, a small town surrounded by forest and snow, with Stockholm, 800 km away, as its closest art center. Instead of going away ourselves, we wanted to bring the world to Umea. We wanted this gallery to be a door to artists all over the world and a door to a deeper and more profound discussion about art, a discussion that local artists could be a part of.

Umea has 100 000 citizens. It does have a lot of good art for its size. There is a young and alert Art Academy, a good Museum of Contemporary Art (BildMuseet), two commercial galleries and a biennal international sculpture park. But the artists that started Verkligheten felt that something was missing. We needed an art space that was more experimental and not so fixed.We also felt that there was a need for a space where artists decided what to show, and where international and local artists could meet.

Since the start we have shown art by international artists like Jacqueline Donachie, Glasgow, Icelandic Love Corporation, Reikjavik, and Bernd Krauss from Berlin. We try to mix exhibitions with international artists, unestablished Swedish artists and local artists. Sofie Weibull is a local performance artist who has exhibited both in 2001 and in 2004 when she did a performance under (!) the lawn in a park in the Umea center. We also have poetrynights, filmnights, lectures and seminars about art.

Verkligheten is also part of IASPIS, a residency programme where international artists stay for 3 months in Umea. Verkligheten has so far been host for two such residencies: Sarah Hughes, photographer from New York, and Factory of Found Clothes, an artist group from St. Petersburg. Factory of Found Clothes did an Umea re-make of the movie “Sound of Music” while they were here.

Verkligheten collaborates with artists-run galleries in different countries. As an artist group, Verkligheten has exhibited at Platform in Vasa, Finland and at Generator in Dundee, Scotland. As an artist group we collaborate within the group and do installations and performances. As individual artists we work with film, photography, painting and site specific work. We have now started this exchange with zor. Alicja Lukasiak and Grzegorz Droz exhibited at Verkligheten in January 2005 and we are now very happy to visit them in Warsaw.

Verkligheten is at the moment run by 7 artists. We take on a new member every year, an artist that just graduated from the Art Academy. The members of the board are: Gerd Aurell, Isabel Cantzler, Karin Frennesson-Westblad, Anneli Furmark, Moa Krestesen, Mattias Olofsson and Helena Wikström.

Gerd Aurell works with drawing, animated film and photography. She is now collaborating with Helena Wkström in the project “Portraits in a Painted Landscape” where people are photographed in front of a giant painting. They are at the moment working with sailors in this project.

Isabel Cantzler works with painting. Her paintings are often very large but feel intimate. They’re are painted in fleshy pinkish-red colours, inbetween innocence and temptation.

Karin Frennesson-Westblad works with relational art, installation and drawing. She has lately been working with confession booths placed around town. She is at the moment director of Musem Anna Nordlander in Skelleftea, Sweden.

Anneli Furmark works with cartoons and painting. Her paintings often depict spooky northern houses and empty towns. She has published several books of cartoons in Sweden.

Mattias Olofsson works with video, performance and photography. He has been working with his alter-ego, “Stor-Stina” (Big Stina), for many years. Stor-Stina was a giant sami girl who was shown in freak shows all around Europe in the early 1900s. As Stor-Stina, Mattias has travelled around the world, letting her meet people and documenting this on photograph.

Helena Wikström works with installation, painting and photography. She has worked together with Gerd Aurell in “Let’s Build Mosques”, an interactive work where the audience was invited to join in rebuilding a few of the world’s destroyed mosques.