“To build a collection is to be in a constant (re)formulation work”

Macarena Dusant is the new process leader and curator. She is an independent art historian, editor and writer with focus on power structures, the public realm and exclusion mechanisms within the western art field. Grafikens Hus would like to thank the former process leader and curator Mmabatho Thobejane for her great work during the project’s first year.

Grafikens hus would like to welcome you with joy as the new process leader and curator in Collecting Thoughts/Samlande tankar! What made you take on the project? 

Thank you! It’s an exciting project that discuss the present and understands that a collection structures history and organizes possible futures. The project gives space to think about collections and that they can start from different perspectives, from selection to illuminate. How do we approach a collection? What is a collection? Why a collection? Holding collections within the museum has a colonial background and this makes the project important as it wants to ask questions about the structures that collections and archives carry. In this way, Collecting Thoughts/Samlande tankar is a unique project where Grafikens Hus strives to develop a method for the construction and handle of a collection, and which will be part of our new museum building. I think that the project takes care of collecting as a state of becoming, where there is an insight that collecting is to be in constant (re)formulation. Yet, in Collecting Thoughts/Samlande tankar we do it in a process-based method together with an expert council group and artists in residency which provides the project with academic, philosophical, artistic and practical input. We could see the project as a collective effort because it is conceived together.  

Can you reveal something about what you have planed ahead for our audience? 

Not quite yet. The project is currently in the beginning of year two (of three) and I am getting familiar with the former process leader and curator Mmabatho Thobejane’s work. She har really built a fantastic knowledge base foundation in the project which I will try to take care of in the best possible way. One thing I will continue with is the monthly letters so that our followers can continue to be updated about the process.   

Do you have any book recommendations for those whoa wants to read more about what it means to collect and archive today?  

I would like to recommend the publication by Mmabatho Thobejane and that compile the first year of Collecting Thoughts/Samlande tankar. It under production at the moment. Keep an eye for it!  

Collecting Thougts/Samlande tankar is a project by Grafikens Hus with the aim to look at graphic print collections in Sweden and abroad from a intersectional and post colonial perspective. The project is funded with a three-year support from Swedish Arts Council.