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The Cute, Unnerving World of Filippa Barkman

Will draw your eyes in like moths to a pile of burning puppies.

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Swedish artist

Filippa Barkman started out on her journey into the abstract and expressionistic tradition as a two-year-old. But now that she’s a grown-up, her work resembles the sort of fluffy, pastel-y imagery you find in kid’s fairy tales. Upon closer inspection, however, the characters stare back at you with a distressed scowl, and the creatures look more like creepy taxidermy experiments than cuddly animals. The cute and the unnerving are so tastefully balanced in Filippa’s work that your eyeballs are drawn in like moths to a pile of burning puppies. VICE: Hi Filippa, why do you draw so many human and animal Siamese twins?
Filippa Barkman: They deal with questions about identity – where does one living being begin and the next commence? They’re also about being in a dependency situation, for better or worse – being forced to cooperate with other individuals or two different sides of yourself. Circuit Would you say your work has any main theme?
The characters are metaphors for emotional states and give a contradictory expression – they oscillate between different states of mind, or towards a new phase. You could compare it to adolescence, or being in limbo, in a borderland between pain and pleasure. In the ambiguous lies the timeless; the human questions about the sense of self. Who is the victim and who is the perpetrator? What has just happened and what is about to happen?

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Beyond What is about to happen?
I’m about to have brekkie. Oh yeah? What are you having?
Three hard bread sandwiches and tea. Then I’ll spend the rest of the day in the studio. Sometimes I stay in there until 4AM. I also try to take a walk every day in the nature reserve near my house.

Disagreement When did you decide to become an artist?
The moment I realised you could continue drawing and sculpting full-time as an adult, I had no doubt about what I wanted to become. We were neighbours with Dan Wolgers [probably Sweden’s most hilarious and exciting artist] when I was a teenager, so I called him up for guidance. He recommended applying to a preparatory art school, and so I did. Did you like art school?
It definitely made me more conscious about my fields of interest and themes. You need time and space to develop your own artistry, which the years of studying gave me.

Still What's next for you?
I’m currently working on my next show for the gallery Stene Projects, which will be a series of sculptures and drawings. I’m crouched down in uncomfortable positions on my studio floor using small tools to cut shapes out of black wax. It’s smudging everywhere it shouldn’t. I’m surrounded by these one-metre-tall dark figures who are watching me. I sometimes get the feeling they’re alive and about to rise and change position at any given moment. I’m a bit worried about how they’ll cope with the summer heat. Filippa is currently exhibiting at the Bristol Biennial, pop by before this Sunday, June 17th if you’re in the area.

All work courtesy of Stene Projects. Follow Milène on Twitter and she might send some pleasant distractions your way: @Milenelarsson