Fia Backström
Fia Backström pulls apart the negative and positive of an image and then recombines them in a displaced arrangement, giving the effect of a relief. She varies this technique, known as paraglyph printing, by mirroring layers and sometimes excising one layer altogether. In "A Vaudeville on Mankind in Time and Space," which showed at Callicoon Fine Arts in 2018, Backström included photographs taken at a Staten Island nature reserve, microscopic imaging of fluid samples from the artist’s bodily orifices, and images sourced from the internet. A close-up image of a finger nail with a cracked cuticle was wallpapered on the gallery partition. Skin, like photo paper, is a permeable membrane sensitive to the outside world. It retains memories of past touches: caresses, cuts, burns. The cuticle is a protective filter between flesh and nail; enlarged, it recalls a landscape divided into territories. The boundaries between external and internal, macro and micro, open here to material transformation.
Backström was born in Sweden in 1970 and is currently based in New York, where she continues to work in diverse mediums including photography, writing, installation, and performance, Recent solo projects include The Shape of Co- to Come at ABF in Stockholm (2016) and ME have to …
Fia Backström pulls apart the negative and positive of an image and then recombines them in a displaced arrangement, giving the effect of a relief. She varies this technique, known as paraglyph printing, by mirroring layers and sometimes excising one layer altogether. In "A Vaudeville on Mankind in Time and Space," which showed at Callicoon Fine Arts in 2018, Backström included photographs taken at a Staten Island nature reserve, microscopic imaging of fluid samples from the artist’s bodily orifices, and images sourced from the internet. A close-up image of a finger nail with a cracked cuticle was wallpapered on the gallery partition. Skin, like photo paper, is a permeable membrane sensitive to the outside world. It retains memories of past touches: caresses, cuts, burns. The cuticle is a protective filter between flesh and nail; enlarged, it recalls a landscape divided into territories. The boundaries between external and internal, macro and micro, open here to material transformation.
Backström was born in Sweden in 1970 and is currently based in New York, where she continues to work in diverse mediums including photography, writing, installation, and performance, Recent solo projects include The Shape of Co- to Come at ABF in Stockholm (2016) and ME have to be turned upside down to become WE at Zinc Bar in New York (2014). She has participated in group exhibitions at institutions such as MoMA PS1 (2015), MoMA (2010), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2008) in New York, and her work can be found in the collections of Moderna Museet and the Whitney Museum.
Courtesy of Callicoon Fine Arts
