Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden
Reports from New Sweden
‘Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden’ was a kaleidoscopic curatorial project run by Tensta konsthall from 2013 to 2019 that dealt with the history and memory of the Stockholm suburb of Tensta and its inhabitants. The late-modernist suburb can also be said to be part of “New Sweden”—a place of diversity, struggle, contradiction, and solidarity distinct from the image of the twentieth-century social welfare state. As an art center proposing to play the role of a museum in this New Sweden, ‘Tensta Museum’ brought together artists, architects, scholars, inhabitants, local associations, schools, and other groups to celebrate and discuss a neighborhood that has been described as both a ghetto and a window on the world and the future.
This publication documents Tensta Museum’s multifaceted iterations, including its branches at the Stockholm City Museum and ArkDes, with essays by Beatrice von Bismarck, Boris Buden, Mark Fisher, and Christina Zetterlund. The book also features conversations between Fahyma Alnablsi, Hanna Nordell, and participants in the Silent University’s Language Café, as well as between Emily Pethick, Emily Fahlén, and Maria Lind on Tensta Museum’s relationship to the neighborhood and the role of mediation in art.