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The Swedish-Somali artist Salad Hilowle stands in front of one of his very large photographs at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.
The photograph could easily be mistaken for a painting. Its saturated canary yellow and avocado green bring out the colors of the old Turnblad Mansion’s floral crown moldings above. In the image, Hilowle is seated in an orange armchair wearing a Somali sarong, his head blurred in motion. Behind him, hangs a royal 18th-century portrait of Adolf Ludvig Gustav Albert Couschi by Swedish rococo painter Gustaf Lundberg.
Hilowle calls the photo “a riff on some kind of art history, both the Western canon, meaning Francis Bacon” — the 20th-century British painter famous for his Surrealist blurry portraits — “but also the Swedish canon, meaning Gustaf Lundberg, who made a portrait of the guy in the middle there.”
A theme of Blackness in both Swedish history and art history runs throughout “Salad Hilowle: Inscriptions,” the artist’s first exhibition in the U.S. The show, a collaboration between ASI and The Somali Museum of Minnesota, is on view through Oct. 27.
Hilowle and his creative team, curator Sagal Farah and graphic designer Oskar Laurin, traveled to Minneapolis for the June 21 opening. They tour the castle-like space filled with Hilowle’s images, sculptures, textiles and films and discuss how the artist explores the complexities of the Afro-Swedish experience.
The exhibition shows that “the presence of Blackness is broader than just the Afro-American perspective,” Hilowle says. “We’re also showing basically Blackness in a global sense, in a Swedish sense.”
“His work is not just part of the Black art history, but it’s also part of the Swedish art history,” Farah adds. “It also is in conversation with the Swedish diaspora that’s here, who might actually recognize this — not necessarily displacement — but different perspectives on your work and identity in a new geography or in a different geography.”
Hilowle used to have an uncle living in Minneapolis, who has since moved to Los Angeles. Farah, born in Mogadishu, has Somali relatives in Minnesota who are coming to the opening.
Hilowle also was born in the capital of Somalia, and moved to Gävle, in northern Sweden, at the age of seven.
The team says Hilowle’s “breakthrough” artwork is his 2021 short film called “Vanus Labor,” and it’s on view in the exhibition. The film was inspired by Hilowle’s experience with a 17th-century painting of the same name by David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl at a county museum in Gävle.
“He basically did a painting of one Black kid surrounded by six white kids,” Hilowle explains.
Growing up in Sweden, Hilowle says he was always taught that Sweden had no Black history. He recalls the amazement he felt, then, as a young man, seeing such an old painting by a white artist that depicted a Black person with care and accuracy rather than as a stereotype. He wondered how it would have shaped him to see this artwork as a child.
The film “Vanus Labor” features friends, family and children engaging with the painting, as well as an opera libretto that Hilowle wrote.
“I want to show the visibility of the African people in Swedish art history, and it’s centralized by this painting,” Hilowle says. “But also, it’s kind of clear that in the film scene, you also get to see that that’s the only depiction of a Black person in the whole museum.”
At American Swedish Institute another short film by Hilowle called “Sylwan” reimagines the 1949 Swedish film “Pippi Långstrump” (“Pippi Longstocking”). The original starred the Black Swedish actor Joe Sylwan.
“This is a hidden story about this Black actor,” Hilowle says.
The Somali Museum of Minnesota in Minneapolis is also screening a Hilowle film, “Letters to Sweden.”
ASI is hosting exhibition tours in English and Somali, and the institute and museum will host a “Somali-Swedish Culture Exchange” Aug. 3 with live music, dance, craft demonstrations and food from the Somali and Swedish Minnesotan communities.
English (US) ·