Sara Davin Omar/Confront
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Solo exhibition, 2023
Royal Institute of Art, SE
Risograph printed photomontages on paper
The series of images on display is ostensibly a collection of archive photos from an exhibition on the architecture of hydropower at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1989. But the photographs are actually photomontages consisting of real archival material mixed with contemporary photos of buildings and landscapes located thousands of kilometers apart. The series of images is based on sites mentioned in the series of essays “Out of Control When I Turn My Power On” and has been created via the concept of “conduction”, the etymology of which derives from the Latin conducere, which can be translated as “to bring together”.
Depicting the National Romanticist switchgear building by the dam in Bårjås with neon-lit advertising masts from the 1930 Stockholm Fair, is an attempt to read modern Swedish architectural history and the prosperity it created as connected to the territories and peoples that were exploited at the expense of the well-being of the masses.