Anna-Karin Arvidsson

Like other artists, I use the act of making in various ways to explore, interpret, and perhaps understand the world. I am a ceramist trained at HDK and have thus also chosen a material, clay, that forms the foundation of my exploration. As a ceramist and artist, I initially devoted a great deal of time to learning how to work with the material—clay—and to understanding how it could be shaped, controlled, and used to express ideas. It was about understanding the material’s identity and how I could influence it. It is an exploration that is still ongoing. In parallel, for the past few years, in my studio at the Italian Palace in Växjö, I have also been working on trying to understand and shape how the material, conversely, influences human identity—primarily from a perspective that views humans as consumers. This means I am interested in the material’s: origin, sender, recipient, anonymity, directness, and how it is part of a process of change from both a societal and posthumanist perspective. This is an exploration I undertake individually, but as I also have the privilege of working as a lecturer in Design, I collaborate with others as well—such as the general public, a secondhand movement, students, an archaeologist, and other colleagues at Linnaeus University in Småland.