Floating between aspects of documentary and fiction, Josefin Arnell’s work methodically navigates the space between exuberance and self-exploitation. Her often favored medium of video freely traverses digital and physical boundaries, including performance, installation, objects, poetry and drawings. Through storytelling, loose narratives are often centered around characters that attempt to navigate contemporary infrastructures with impossible demands. These characters veer toward endless monologues rather than conversations, meanwhile interlacing in a sort of metasphere to compose a script. By often choosing to work with non-actors, she captures a rawness that reflects an emotional landscape exploring unattainable desires, perfectionism and control. The teenage girl, the horse and the mother are recurring characters alongside clumsy allegories wrestling with conflicts of the human condition or environmental catastrophes.
Josefin Arnell lives and works in Amsterdam (NL).
2021 | Wild Filly Story, Vilnius |
2020 | Wild Filly Story, curated by Rhea Dall, UKS, Oslo |
2020 | Bloomers in the Woods, Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam |
2019 | Suck on Me Harder I Eat You for Starter, Lilyrobert Gallery, Paris |
2022 | Frenemy, Duo presentation: Josefin Arnell & Margaret Haines, Rozenstraat - a rose is a rose |
2022 | The Lure, Duo presentation: Josefin Arnell & Marilou Bal, Sissi Club, Marseille |
2022 | The Box, Parts Project, Den Haag, NL |
2022 | Even a worm will turn, The Nordic House, Reykjavik |
2021 | Athens Biennale 7 Edition: Eclipse, Athens |
2021 | Regenerate, Brussels |
2020 | I’m From Nowhere Good, Montreuil |
2019 | 3 Package Deal Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst |
2019 | HELLFUN, 3HD Festival, Berlin |
2019 | For Better or Worse, Kunstverein Göttingen |
2019 | Conversing Motherboards, Antwerp Art Weekend |
2019 | Performance: Failure is a Feeling that Exist Long Before it Comes, Antwerp Art Weekend |
2019 | Abstract Seks: We Don’t Have Any Clothes, Only Equipment, Turin |
2018 | Sister Said to Satan: My Diary is Too Hot For You, duo show with Margaret Haines, London |
2018 | It’s a Long Way to Heaven, Tegel Art Mega + Yek, Stockholm |
2018 | 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow |
2018 | The Tick, Theodora Niemeijer Prijs, Van Abbee Museum Eindhoven |
2018 | Feature expanded with Natasja Loutchko |
2018 | The Hazenstraat Biennale, Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam |
2018 | A Guiding Dog for a Blind Dog, Contemporary Art Futurua, Prague |
2018 | Beyond Future is Past, Kunsthalle Münster |
2018 | Haptic House, Berlin |
2017 | Rocky: Quick and Dirty in Societeit Sexyland, Amsterdam |
2017 | Het Mysterie van de Waarheid, Mini Museumnacht |
2017 | Duo show with Aapo Nikkanen, Sorbus Gallery |
2017 | The Future is Feminist |
2017 | Todays Art, Den Haag |
2017 | Fallingwater, Ardez |
2017 | I’m in the Mood for Love - Eternal Night – The Explanation |
2017 | My Wild Flag Performance Festival, Stockholm |