Anna Uddenberg — Premium Economy

Every three years, the Kunsthalle Mannheim and the Hector Foundations award the Hector Prize to international contemporary artists or collectives. With the Swedish artist Anna Uddenberg, the jury opted for a strong feminist position in 2022. Uddenberg was born in 1982 and now lives and works in Berlin and Stockholm.

With her artistic work, Uddenberg presents an exciting, challenging and also polarizing view of physicality, sex (or gender) and commodity aesthetics. In her figurative and recent abstract works, Uddenberg explores gender performativity and supposedly authentic self-images in the age of social media platforms.

The exhibition at the Kunsthalle features several sculptures, most of which were created especially for the exhibition. In her artistic exploration of the medium of sculpture, Uddenberg further develops her formal language in her latest works using the 3D printing process and creates a haunting composition that is unified by an exciting exhibition architecture. The oddly shaped bodies draped over suitcases or pieces of furniture - which brought the artist international recognition - have given way to a series of even stranger-looking contraptions. Instead of showing the objectification of the human body in the mediatized present, the artist now presents objects that could form the poses of the bodies in her earlier works. The works on display in the Kunsthalle will be performed on the opening evening.