Exhibitions

The Multicultural Centre is situated in the greater Stockholm region, Botkyrka, formerly a prosperous semi-industrial, semi-agricultural community that experienced a major demographic change in the early 1970’s as a result of the quick and efficient building of housing units for 35,000 inhabitants within only a few years. As well as experiencing a rise in population figures, Botkyrka has also become the municipality in Sweden with the highest percentage of immigrants.

Housed in the early 19th century mansion of Fittja gård, and with the old highway, that once constituted the link between the Swedish capital and the outer world, cutting across the courtyard, the centre is indeed symbolically situated. None of the original buildings, however, were suited for the Centre's contemporary mission of becoming a public arena, an open institution for exchange and interaction. In 2003 a new exhibition building was opened.

The Multicultural Centre is a knowledge organisation which, on a regular basis, uses cultural activities to achieve its purpose. In the exhibition programme started in 2003 the focus has been placed on broad cultural themes, art and contemporary issues. The overall purpose of the programme is to discuss differences within the scope of human identity. The purpose of the art focus is to set up meetings that open up a perspective which has a basis in the creation of equal quality of life without forcing people into being identical.

Some examples:

First Generation. Esther Shalev-Gerz
In 2002 the Centre started cooperation with Esther Shalev-Gerz, a Lithuanian-born artist living in Paris. Both foreigners and Swedes who moved to Botkyrka were invited by her to engage in a reflection about their identity within multiple cultural references. Thirty-four local people agreed to contribute to the project and were filmed while replying to a series of questions posed by the artist. On your coming to Botkyrka: What did you lose? What did you find? What did you get? What did you give?

First Generation is now a permanent artwork at the Multicultural Centre that is displayed both inside the building and on the glass facade that attracts visitors during the dark winter season.

The work has contributed greatly to the central mission of the Multicultural Centre – to spread awareness that facilitates self-comprehension and insight, which in turn can help us understand other people's frames of reference. The video installation highlights how the world is becoming increasingly interwoven through migration and how people of all ethnic backgrounds have become part of a historic new social pattern.

During the Year of Cultural Diversity 2006 the installation will also be physically spread over the world by an international tour that is going to Kazan (Russia), Dublin, Paris and Brussels. For this tour an art book has been produced that analyses and discusses the video installation put into both a local and an international context. In the book the participants' voices are translated into Russian, English, French and German.

Blood, Hair, Death and Taste
These subjects have great opportunities for discussing Man as a social and cultural being. In every institution that analyses society it is obvious that modern man suffers from a constant lack of identity, from stress that is managed through increasing variety and change. We can also note that religion and ethnicity are used in new forms as cornerstones in the formation of identity.

Western societies work with concepts, e.g. integration – which places strong focus on immigrants and their children and much less focus on the population majority's role in the process. The risk of the demonising of "the other person" is evident when such a perspective is allowed to prevail. The need to examine and test the cornerstones and interpretations of different cultural systems at the everyday level is increasing and we contribute to this through exhibitions and texts which enable a more in-depth reflection.

Widely speaking the different themes deal with highlighting social and cultural limits, the crossing of those limits and changes in contemporary Sweden. Cooperation around Blood with Riksutställningar (Swedish Travelling Exhibitions) made it possible to take the exhibition on tour to several places in the country. The taste exhibition was a project carried out together with Malmö Museums. Both the other exhibitions have also been show at other museums in Sweden.

BLOOD, HAIR and DEATH also connect our interest in combining the concepts CULTURE and NATURE in one context. All too often in exhibitions human being are discussed as if they are disassociated from one of these dimensions.