Karin Lind Swedish, b. 1959
Karin Lind's artistic work revolves around three-dimensional creations of space, in the form of installations and architectural elements placed directly in the landscape, as well as more traditional round sculptures in bronze. The three-dimensional aspect compels us as observers to engage with the work as a whole while reminding us of our own existence as physical beings. The materials Lind uses evoke urban environments such as airports, various waiting rooms, shopping centers, and other transitional spaces liberated from both history and nostalgia.
However, in Lind's hands, the same materials carry an expressive and poetic charge, used to explore fundamental questions about life and its conditions. Questions about eternity and its opposite, finiteness.
The house is a frequently recurring architectural archetype. Initially, a heavy and inaccessible structure in iron, it gradually transforms into an airy greenhouse-like construction, where the visual boundary between the exterior and interior has almost been erased. The transparency of glass, like the mirror-like surface of water found in several installations, expands the experience of the physical form of the artwork. The surface that exists between inside and outside, like the reflection in water, functions as a symbolic boundary between the living and the dead—a theme that has long been a leitmotif for Karin Lind. Can one blur the boundary between life and death, make it less palpable? However, the answer must still be that no matter how thin and invisible the glass wall may be, it exists. There is no passage between being and not being. Written by Heli Haapasalo, February 2002.
Karin Lind is an artist, set designer, and one half of the artist duo SIMKA. In 2020, she presented the installation Human and Tree Box and had a solo exhibition titled Golden Age at Körsbärsgården. Her permanent sculpture Signe is also displayed in the sculpture park, in addition to SIMKA's works Buildings and Reflections.
Karin Lind resides and works in Stockholm and Gotland, functioning both as an artist (alternatively through SIMKA and independently) and a set designer. She completed her education at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, specializing in sculpture from 1978 to 1983, and at Stockholm University of Dramatic Arts, studying scenography from 1989 to 1992. She pursued studies at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm at different times: initially in sculpture from 1995 to 1996 and later courses in Art and Architecture, as well as Art and New Media from 1999 to 2003. From 2004 to 2007, she engaged in an artistic research project at the Stockholm University of the Arts, concluding in 2007. Concurrently, Karin Lind served as the main instructor in scenography education at the Stockholm University of the Arts from 1997 to 2007 and as a guest lecturer at Beckmans Design School. Following this, she continues to be a frequently invited guest lecturer in Sweden and abroad.
As a set designer, Karin Lind has been actively engaged by Swedish theaters since 1991, with her most recent assignment being Platå Effekt for the City Ballet at the Komische Opera in Berlin. As an artist, Karin Lind has exhibited extensively in Sweden and abroad, primarily through numerous artistic exchanges with the SIMKA artist duo. Her artistic work encompasses painting, sculpture, performance, and video, including public permanent artworks such as Stegen on Slottsholmen in Västervik (in collaboration with SIMKA).
Solo exhibitions include shows at Gallery ARGO in Stockholm from 1992 to 2008 and SPG Gallery in Stockholm since 2011, featuring exhibitions like LOD in 2011, Clearing in 2014, Inbetween Peaks in 2017, and Fountain in 2020. Additionally, she presented the solo exhibition Golden Age at Körsbärsgården Art Hall in Gotland in 2020. The performance piece Textverket titled HON - Sisters to Another Mama was performed in the sculpture park at Körsbärsgården in 2020 with the support of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. Karin Lind has received numerous scholarships and awards, including the Stockholm City Culture Prize in 2012.
