Urban Scene XII – XIV
Ninia Sverdrup

Ninia Sverdrup’s work deals with the concept of time and its significance in everyday life. Sverdrup experiments with the expression “to have time for.” In an earlier piece titled My To-Do List, the artist spent an entire day at the post office—from nine in the morning until six in the evening— just to buy three stamps. Sverdrup also often references the Japanese concept of ma – the valuable emptiness of perceiving time and space in a non-rational way.

Urban Scene is a series of video loops filmed with a fixed camera to capture everyday events. The urban space utilized takes on the quality of a movie set. None of the action is planned. The entirely commonplace images were then carefully reworked, with Sverdrup focusing her main effort on composing the sounds in each scene. She is interested in the rhythm of sound as an image and entirely constructs the soundtrack of her videos.

About the Artist
Ninia Sverdrup (b.1971, Sweden) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin since 2004. Her main medium is video, but she also uses the urban space as a platform for her actions. She has exhibited all around the world (Germany, Sweden, China, Slovenia, Myanmar, India, Great Britain, Ireland, France, Lithuania, Greece, Spain, Canada, Singapore, Bulgaria, and Russia). She graduated from Umeå Art Academy (MA) in 2004. She also has a BA in Economics, Political Science and Philosophy.

niniasverdrup.com

Funded by The Swedish Arts Grants Committee