Dorothée Nilsson Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition I am Silver by Lotta Antonsson, with new works that explore the search for one’s own or the constructed identity. The exhibition title is based on the poem The Mirror (1960) by Sylvia Plath, who – like Lotta Antonsson – uses mirror symbolism as a metaphor for a search for identity. 

The conflict between rejection and acceptance, the autonomous perception of the ‚self’ and the ‘other’ as well as the strive for self-knowledge by refuting the objectified identity imposed by society is a recurring element in her work.

Based on the aesthetics of the 1960s and 1970s –a time of social upheaval – Lotta Antonsson complements vintage photographs from her archive of fashion, erotic, and lifestyle magazines such as Twen, Das Magazin, and Playboy and printed matters with natural materials (shells, driftwood, gemstones) in her collages. She examines the historical and photographic representation, the objectification of women, and the male gaze under formal and psychological aspects. A recurring theme in her work has involved feminist perspectives reconstructing cultural treatment of the female body in particular.

Antonsson recreates and reconstructs the original context, and by using the techniques of collage and montage, a personal and unique way of looking at the ephemeral nature of things emerges. Her analogue cuts and repetitions take possession of the allegorical potential of image fragments, freeing fashion, and erotic photography into paradoxical explorations of the original intentions of the images and objects.

The installation Paths to Inner Power (Fibonacci calculations) follows the mathematical principle of the golden ratio in its spatial arrangement. The optical and physical perception is influenced by the artist’s choreographed arrangement of the objects in the exhibition space. In the process, conscious references were made to the world of thoughts and ideas on archetypes from psychoanalysis. 

Lotta Antonsson (*1963) belongs to a generation of artists who emerged in the early 1990s and addressed the objectification of women. She studied fine arts and photography in Stockholm at the University of Arts, Crafts, and Design and at the Royal Art Academy in Copenhagen. Antonsson was a professor of photography (2007 – 2016) at the Valand Academy of Art and Design in Gothenburg. Her works have been in numerous international exhibitions, including the Västerås Konsthall (2020), the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art in Riga (2019), Photobiennale in Brighton (2010), and the Daegu Photo Biennale in South Korea (2012).