Magnus af Petersens
Curator, writer
03.11.2025 – 30.11.2025
“I am an independent curator and writer, recent exhibitions and collaborations have been shown at Sven-Harrys Konstmuseum, Nobel Prize Museum and House of Sweden, Washington DC. I also work as Head of Curatorial Affairs for Arte Collectum. Previously positions include Director of Bonniers Konsthall, Senior curator/Head of Collection, Moderna Museet and Chief Curator, Whitechapel Gallery, London.”
“I will work with an exhibition that will open at Institut suĂ©dois on November 11, in connection with Paris Photo: “Material of Memories” will present the work of three Swedish artists/photographers: Erik Gustafsson, Linda Hofvander and Jenny Källman. I will also give talks and guided tours of the exhibition – as well as networking with the Parisian photography scene in order to seek future collaborations with the French and Swedish contemporary photography and art scenes.”
Conny Karlsson Lundgren
Visual Artist
03.11.2025 – 30.11.2025
“With the help of film, text, image and performance, my work traverses the porous boundaries between social, political, and private identities, reimagined through experiences, desires, and secret codes. I share my time between Stockholm and Hoby Mosse, and studied at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht and the Valand Academy of Fine Arts in Gothenburg. In 2024, I had a major solo exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall Stockholm and created Gläntan/The Glade, Sweden’s first LGBTQI+ monument in 2023.”
“During my stay, I will be following the traces and residues of one of my earlier projects, which focused on a queer international summer camp in the French countryside in the 1970s. Some of the Swedish participants travelled on to Paris with the French. I am curious to find out what happened after the transformative events at the camp–when the French activists’ political engagement and activism continued in other forms.”
Rebecka Lettevall
Professor intellectual history
03.11.2025 – 30.11.2025
“I have worked at Malmö University for nearly ten years, most recently serving as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement and Human Rights. Recently, I have immersed myself in topics such as academic freedom and the role of universities in society. As a historian of ideas, I am particularly interested in Kant’s ideas on peace and global citizenship. These concepts have stayed with me and have been joined by human rights and neutrality among various thinkers and in different contexts.”
“During my month in Paris, I plan to work on my writing on the role of universities in society, especially during a time of increased polarization at the local, national, European, and international levels. This topic brings together my interests in peace, democracy, global citizenship, and universities. Paris is home to the International Association of Universities (IAU), which is affiliated with UNESCO. I am participating in one of the IAU’s programs and plan to expand my knowledge through it.”
Benjamin Martin
Senior lecturer, Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University
03.11.2025 – 30.11.2025
“I am a historian of twentieth-century international cultural relations. Born and educated in the US (BA University of Chicago 1996, PhD Columbia University 2006), I have lived in Sweden since 2010 and am currently employed as senior lecturer in the Department of History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University. I explored the cultural cooperation between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in my book, The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture (Harvard, 2016).”
“In Paris I will work on a book manuscript entitled Defining Culture, Debating World Order: An International History of the Culture Concept, 1935–1990. Today the idea of culture is ubiquitous in interstate relations, but its history, and thus its meaning, are poorly understood. I explore this history by studying how diplomats mobilized and defined culture through international agreements. I will consult relevant archives (including at UNESCO) and discuss my findings with Paris-based experts.”
Marie Silkeberg
Poet and translator
03.11.2025 – 30.11.2025
“I’m a poet, translator, and poetry film maker. I’ve been a professor in creative writing at Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg, published ten collections of poetry since 1990, the most recent Hjärta, jägare, 2025. An English translation of my work appeared in 2021: Damacus, Atlantis. I’ve translated several books of the Danish poet Inger Christensen and worked with her archive. I’ve also translated the American poets Alice Notley, Susan Howe, Rosmarie Waldrop, Anne Boyer, Claudia Rankine.”
“I will study the work of Simone Weil, as a part of a larger project I’m working on: dialogues between women in crucial historic events, women who never met in real life, but who have exerted a decisive influence on their time and afterwards. The dialogues revolve around different themes – body and exile, nature and the experience of war, war and language, climate catastrophe and love/wonder. I will also work with the filmmaker Baptiste Jopeck on a film on translation and the poet George Oppen.”
Erik Viklund
Photographer
03.11.2025 – 30.11.2025
“Erik Viklund is a Swedish photographer whose experimentation with various analog photographic techniques reflects on time, transience and the human relationship to places through both photography and publications. Viklund’s work often starts from a physical place, but above all from encounters with people in these places and how the specific materials of the place can be used to dissolve boundaries; between the depicted and the representation of the same.”
“With a forgotten war diary as my companion, I travel to Paris to delve into the trenches, their history, and possible futures. Among other things, I will take photographs, take day trips to Vemy, the Somme, and Ypres, and explore the American Library in Paris, whose core collection was created during World War I and has the motto After the Darkness of War, the Light of Books.”