Purple Column

Klara Lidén

introducing Klara Lidén

text by HANS ULRICH OBRIST
portrait by SANDY KIM

 

Klara Lidén, who is now living and working in Berlin and New York, was born in Sweden. In 2004-05, I saw her debut show at Reena Spaulings and was fascinated by how she connects her art practice to urbanism. “Its point of departure is an active engagement with urban life and an earnest attempt to shake up and question widespread patterns of civil conformism” [from the Serpentine Gallery London catalogue], writes Daniel Birnbaum. Therefore her space of action as well as her material of use is the city and its public.

“Lidén engages with the most basic assumptions regarding domestic and public spaces, homelessness and contemporary forms of primitive shelter” [from the Serpentine Gallery London catalogue]. She reclaims the city as she is trying to conquer it with her own set…