Carola Björk’s practice is not easily classified, including photography, assemblage, sculpture, ready mades, installation, text and painting. Yet all her work is rooted in every day life situations and askes questions about relational bonds and its influence on identity. In early adolescence Carola lost contact with her mother which in a natural way has developed into research around emotional wounds and the quality of care and attention.
Her work has developed in correspondence with a personal trauma where art making has become a tool of philosophizing around existential matters. Things occurring in her pieces is most often found on construction sites or recognized from home environment and used in an associative manner by refigurating former meaning into something else. As in Character (2022) for example. Here, plinths and moving blankets operate as different signs that, put together, compose a new narrative. Titles and descriptions also play an integral part in the pieces, reaching towards something beyond what is stated. Carola has a process oriented approach to her work and oscillate between intuitive and thoughtful actions. Fundamental subjects is transformation and presence, both as philosophical concepts and working method. In Collecting Piece from 2014, where a bed sheet was left on sites of personal importance with the aim that the surroundings make imprints on the fabric, time and place became deliberate elements in producing the work and set a new direction in her practice. Something that has developed into her installations often referring to their immediate architectural surrounding. There is an ongoing exploration of the encounter between different physical and sensual materials in Carola’s practice, which generally questions the genesis of who I am.
Carola Björk, born 1979, lives and work in Stockholm, Sweden. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from Konstfack in Stockholm, MA in The Theory of Practical Knowledge and BA in Continental Philosophy from Södertörn University, Stockholm.
In 2019 Carola was invited to Zokei University in Tokyo to give a lecture on the relation between western existentialism, her art practice and zen-buddhism. In 2023 she did an oral presentation at London Center for Interdiciplinary Research with the title Lite-writing as a way to get in touch with emptiness. The same year she also presented a scientific poster at the International Conference on Art and Health at MAAT in Lisbon, discussing how photographing stabilize emotional chaos and create resilience. In the summer of 2024 she presented the latter material at Nordic Art Therapy Conference in Elverum, Norway. Carola´s work has been shown at Liljevalchs, Sweden; Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark; The International Cultural Centre (ICC), Belgium and Galerija Hladilnica, Slovenia for instance and has been awarded with grants from Swedish Arts Grants Committee and Stockholm Culture Department among others.