In her research based practice, Åsa Sonjasdotter brings stories to the fore that already are there, right with us, yet not recognized, often suppressed. For these stories to come to life, Sonjasdotter works not only to find a form for them to thrive, but as well a situation or a set of relations, from where their journey can begin and from where they can move, in order move others. In her talk Sonjasdotter will introduce specific projects to discuss how stories take place and reverberate as embodied relations.
The work Cultivating Abundance engages in the recultivation of peasant-bred crops within the highly industrialized farming landscapes of southern Scandinavia. The project employs a twofold approach of recultivation and tracing back through textual, visual, and material archives, including the cultivars themselves. The outcome was concluded in the 2022 film Cultivating Abundance. In the process-based work The Potatoes’ Testimonies on the Defense of the Earth Sonjasdotter collaborates with artist Daniela Zambrano Almidón to activate stories of solidarity and struggle among peasants in the Andean region, Central Europe, and beyond, connecting them by cultivating plants and stories of papas/potatoes.
Åsa Sonjasdotter’s research takes place at the intersection of artistic and academic methodology. Sonjasdotter has contributed extensively to the discursive field of art and agriculture, introducing questions of farming and breeding as a practice creating ontologies beyond the nature-culture divide. Sonjasdotter received her PhD in artistic practice at HDK-Valand, the University of Gothenburg, in 2024. Towards Peasant Cultivation of Abundance involved long term collaboration with farming communities in Scania organising around the custody of peasant-bred, common grains. The outcome was concluded in the 2022 film Cultivating Abundance, screened widely and internationally. The film is distributed by Filmform, Stockholm, and represented by Malmö Art Museum and KIN Museum of Contemporary Art.
MA Forum is a seminar series on artistic research, hosted by HDK-Valand in collaboration with L’Internationale Online. Through invited guests, the series explores different dimensions of artistic research. The lectures are public and open to all.
