Program
The Unspeakable is a photography exhibition by Johannes Stjärne Nilsson at Motiv in Markaryd
Sometimes language eludes us: Moments when the world suddenly appears larger and stranger than we want to admit. When people are faced with something that really cannot be reduced to a photograph. If you are curious and attentive, you can see it: The Unspeakable.
In Johannes Stjärne Nilsson's photographs, we encounter the strange theater of humanity: searching, waiting, doubting, playing. The images balance between the serious and the absurd, between the existential weight of the adult world and the wide-eyed search for meaning in the child. Here there is an interest in inner worlds and our sometimes comically awkward attempts to orient ourselves in something that constantly exceeds ourselves; nature, time, loneliness, the sacred.
The exhibition is part of the Småland Triennial and is linked to the 2026 theme: Anxiety: Art, preparedness, resistance. Not through direct answers or political slogans, but by remaining in the care and warmth that we all need. In a time characterized by acceleration and crisis, perhaps the ability to endure ambiguity becomes a form of resistance in itself. To continue to feel wonder. To not immediately shut out the strange. To look up from the screen and see the wild in the white of the eye.
Stjärne Nilsson's visual world is characterized by a humanistic gaze; skeptical, tender and sometimes hilarious. Human actions appear as both silly and deeply moving: a creature that builds rituals, stories and symbols in order to be able to live with the knowledge of its own smallness.
Perhaps this is also where the exhibition opens up the most: in the realization that we will never fully understand the world, or each other, and that this is not necessarily a failure, but a condition for continuing to be human.
PROGRAM
10:00 Opening & welcome speech
10:30 Gunhild plays and sings
12:45 Discussion about the exhibition: Olof & Johannes
13:00 Erika and Thomas play and sing
14:30 Gunhild plays and sings
