Bio
Mats Hjelm (b.1959), is an artist working with large-scale video installations, a documentary filmmaker, and creator of public multimedia artworks based in Stockholm, Sweden. His work investigates the boundaries between art and movements of social justice, video installation and documentary practices, and personal and global political narratives. He has worked extensively in Europe, West Africa, the United States, Brazil, India, Tunisia, and more.
Hjelm’s work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of African American History, Detroit; Biennale Africaine de la Photographie, Bamako; Dubai International Film Festival; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Venice Biennale; Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM), Rio de Janeiro; among others.
Mats Hjelm holds an MFA in sculpture from Konstfack University College of Art, Crafts, and Design in Stockholm, and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the US under the guidance of Professor Michael Hall. He has further education in philosophy from Stockholm University and in design leadership from the University of Industrial Arts, Helsinki.
Hjelm is represented in several private and public collections including Moderna Museet, Malmö Art Museum, Uppsala Art Museum, Filmform, Norrtälje Art Museum, and The National Public Arts Council Sweden. He is currently represented by Cecilia Hillström Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden.
Hjelm’s extended art practice includes teaching specialized courses within contemporary art. He is also an expert cinematographer, film colorist, programmer, and video installation specialist, currently active as a consultant in these fields.
CV
Video Art
In a number of large-scale video installations, such as in the Trilogy (1997-2003) and the Black Madonna Series (2006-2008) the history of the Civil Rights movement is in focus. Poetic images of contemporary Detroit appear interwoven with documentary footage, many from Hjelm’s late father who was a cinematographer documenting Detroit in the 1960s for Swedish Television, tell stories of oppression, pride, and the complexity of racial integration in the United States.
Hjelm’s panoramic installations Taste of Salt (2013) and Who the Fool (2015) include a poetic layering of political and existential narratives with his documentary work in West Africa and a reflection on Atlantic history and movements of social justice.
In The Other Shore (2017-2019), The Healer (2021), and It Will Be (2023), the common element of water and the sea echo of the legacies of the Middle Passage on either side of the Atlantic.
Simple Sabotage Field Guide (2022) is a filmic journey recounting the path towards Finisterra in Galicia, Spain in a large-scale 4-channel video installation with kaleidoscopic sequences of landscapes interrupted by fragments of a manual written by the CIA in the late 1940s, containing disruptive tactics for toppling down enemies.
In It Will Be (2023), existential dimensions of historical legacies represented in filmic fragments from different places in the world are explored as a dystopic vision of the future. These are set to the reading of the poem 22nd century by the artist Exuma, a Bahamian visionary, humanistic philosopher, and people’s poet, that reflects a conception of the future as a false liberation.
In Memories of Lakes Lost (2024), the artist takes the viewer through a series of panoramic sequences of fragile water landscapes of lakes and seashores accompanied by Johann Sebastian Bach’s 1st and 2nd cello suites, played by South African guitarist Derek Gripper.
Documentary Film
Mats Hjelm has directed two feature-length documentaries, Black Nation (2009) and A Pan-African Mission (2023), where he has collaborated with the Pan-African Orthodox Christian Church (PAOCC) in Detroit, Michigan, also known as the Shrine of the Black Madonna, and narrates the history of the Church as it stems from legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and its activities with the local community, and later when the church expands its activities in West Africa.
Public Art
Mats Hjelm has worked with public commissions, mostly in Sweden.
In Trees to See the Sky Through (2023), Hjelm has integrated nature into Malmö Regional Hospital’s interiors with images and footage of trees from different parts of the world using glass-printed photography alongside the hospitals 14-story glass-encased stariwell and interactive video installations in the hospital’s elevators.
At Uppsala municipality’s Children and Youth’s Social Centre (BUS), Hjelm intervened in the glass façade with Another View (2019) a large-scale photograph of a lake environment, which alters the natural lighting in the interiors during the day, and is visible from the street at night when lit up.
For the oncology ward at Nya Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, Hjelm has created Healing Flows (2015) video installations representing the connection between water and healing environments in the radio- and chemotherapy rooms.
On the façade of the headquarters of SEB bank, Hjelm created the video installation After Hours (2010), where dancers and performers in business suits are engaged in a dance of power and submission with the office space as a backdrop.
Video
