Carla Åhlander | online portfolio
Carla Åhlander, image from stasi series
photo print
Often working through photographic series, Carla Åhlander uses this medium to provoke inquisitive looking. Exploring structures of power as well as those that appear as trivial, Carla’s quiet photos give new stresses to her subject matter. In doing so they reveal, as through a soft haze, memories and histories occluded by surface appearances.
selected work
Carla Åhlander, Still lifes, 2015
series of 8 photos
Carla Åhlander, Still lifes, 2015
series of 8 photos
Carla Åhlander, Still lifes, 2015
series of 8 photos
Carla Åhlander, Still lifes, 2015
series of 8 photos
Carla Åhlander, Still lifes, 2015
series of 8 photos
Carla Åhlander, Still lifes, 2015
series of 8 photos
Carla Åhlander, Still lifes, 2015
series of 8 photos
Carla Åhlander, Still lifes, 2015
series of 8 photos
Carla Åhlander, Still lifes, 2015
series of 8 photos
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (Rostock), 2003
C-print photo, variable
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (boarder), 2016
C-print photo, 40 x 40 cm
series and exhibitions
My Retrotopia
2022
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander, My Retrotopia, 2022
set of 35mm black and white negative film (work-in-progress)
Carla Åhlander and Camilla Løw
Belmacz, London (UK), 2022
Installation View
Carla Åhlander’s soft grain photographs narrate moments that echo through life, provoking in turn an inquisitive mode of looking. In this exhibition, the tranquillity of empty rooms is illuminated in such a way as to transform our engagement with these humble spaces; to make us think of places not yet.
—press release
Carla Åhlander, On the Verge of Normality, 2022
projector installation, series of 80 digital photos
Carla Åhlander, On the Verge of Normality, 2022
projector installation, series of 80 digital photos
Carla Åhlander, On the Verge of Normality, 2022
projector installation, series of 80 digital photos
Carla Åhlander, On the Verge of Normality, 2022
projector installation, series of 80 digital photos
Carla Åhlander, On the Verge of Normality, 2022
series of 80 digital photos
Carla Åhlander, On the Verge of Normality, 2022
projector installation, series of 80 digital photos
Carla Åhlander, On the Verge of Normality, 2022
projector installation, series of 80 digital photos
Carla Åhlander, On the Verge of Normality, 2022
projector installation, series of 80 digital photos
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
Carla Åhlander, Parallel World, 2022
pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 20 x 30 cm
The Idea of a Mountain
2016
Carla Åhlander, To Look for a Mountain, 2016
7 C-print photo prints, 40 x 60 cm
Carla Åhlander’s work The Idea of a Mountain tells the story of a journey and search for a mountain she has found in an old slide image in the remains of her father’s. Åhlander embarks on a journey to find the place she has seen in the picture. The journey takes her to Switzerland and the Alps, where she continues her search for the right mountain and for the same perspective as in the original photo from the 1950s. We get to follow her searching process on the images of the slide installation, moving back and forth in different times and spaces.
Inventory
2014
Carla Åhlander, Inventory, 2014
set of giclee prints of scanned 35 mm coulor negative, 57 x 86 cm (each)
Carla Åhlander, Inventory, 2014
set of giclee prints of scanned 35 mm color negative, 57 x 86 cm (each)
Carla Åhlander, Inventory, 2014
set of giclee prints of scanned 35 mm color negative, 57 x 86 cm
Carla Åhlander, Inventory, 2014
set of giclee prints of scanned 35 mm color negative, 57 x 86 cm
Perspektiven (After Work)
nGbK, Berlin, 2013-14
Installation View
“I am showing enlarged photos of double spreads from diaries I have collected in the area. It wasn’t easy to get hold of people’s diaries. I didn’t really think of that before I started! Obviously many people don’t want other people to read their diary. I put up notes, I asked in Volkshochschulen and schools, but didn’t find any diary that way.
Then by chance I met a Danish woman, who lives in the area. We shared a taxi to the airport and she asked me what I do, I told her about the project and asked her if she by any chance writes a diary. And she said, “Actually I do”.
I later went to see her and she lent me her diary. The idea was to try to describe a place through the stories of individuals who live there. I wanted to give a portrait of a place through people’s different points of view, their private thoughts about things. Rather than through an official history”
—Carla Åhlander interviewed by Janine Sack, 2014
Carla Åhlander, Perspectives (After Work), 2013/14
extracts of Berlin diaries, collected and photographed for 8 billboards in subway station Schwartzkopffstraße, each 2 x 3 m
Carla Åhlander, Perspectives (Rese), 2013/14
Berlin diaries, collected and photographed, 2 x 3 m
Carla Åhlander, Perspectives (After Work), 2013/14
extracts of Berlin diaries, collected and photographed for 8 billboards in subway station Schwartzkopffstraße, each 2 x 3 m
Carla Åhlander, Perspectives (Martin), 2013/14
Berlin diaries, collected and photographed, 2 x 3 m
Carla Åhlander, Perspectives (After Work), 2013/14
extracts of Berlin diaries, collected and photographed for 8 billboards in subway station Schwartzkopffstraße, 2 x 3 m
Carla Åhlander, Perspectives (Mille), 2013/14
Berlin diaries, collected and photographed, 2 x 3 m
Auflösung
2013
Carla Åhlander, Auflösung II, 2013
silver gelatine print on baryta paper, 30 x 40 cm
Every Possible Tone
2012
Carla Åhlander, Every Possible Tone, 2012
(detail) enlarged contact sheet pigment print on adhesive vinyl, 200 x 150 cm
In Carla Åhlander’s photographic images, narratives are ongoing. Some situations feel somewhat familiar, but we cannot really read the whole story. Something is going on, a sort of proceeding in this time fragment, a piece of life. She presses the button at the right moment and then lets the story in the picture continue.
—Kajsa Lindskog
Sealed Premises
2011
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
“When I look at Carla Ahlander’s work, it seems like she is trying to adjust the tones to remember those memories that belong to the ‘in-between’ – I mean those moments that we are quick to forget, or never happened”
—Lars Norén Nattarbeten
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection, variable
Carla Åhlander, Sealed Premises, 2011
series of 14 digital images for projection
Potential Areas for Projection
2010
Carla Åhlander, Potential areas for projection, 2010
installation with 18 C-print photos, 30 × 45 cm (each)
Carla Åhlander, Potential Areas for Projection, 2010
installation with 18 C-print photos, 30 × 45 cm (each)
Carla Åhlander, Potential Areas for Projection, 2010
installation with 18 C-print photos, 30 × 45 cm (each)
Carla Åhlander, Potential Areas for Projection, 2010
installation with 18 C-print photos, 30 × 45 cm (each)
Carla Åhlander, Potential Areas for Projection, 2010
installation with 18 C-print photos, 30 × 45 cm (each)
Carla Åhlander, Potential Areas for Projection, 2010
installation with 18 C-print photos, 30 × 45 cm (each)
Untitled (the former Stasi building, Berlin)
2005
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (Former Stasi bulding, Berlin), 2005
photographs of Stasi office and interrogation rooms for 16 billboards, 2 x 3 m
Untitled (the former Stasi building, Berlin), 2005, registers a social order founded on power and control of the individual. The setting of the room upholds a symbolic dimension, able to enhance the visual effect of a repressive system; it nourishes the idea of a mechanistic conception of work processes, and favors, at the same time, role and hierarchy establishment.
At the centre of Carla Åhlander’s interest, the totalitarian system is dealt with from an outside view. She examines the properties of spaces which, within power structures, become effective control and discipline instances; moreover, she radiographs rooms that, undoubtedly, not everybody can associate with personal experiences, apparently not worthy to be photographed. Transferring these images in the public space, in an advertisement layout, Ahlander’s works emphasise all the more the numerous mechanisms lying behind authoritarian constellations.
Despite the total absence of individuals in these images, the objects in the rooms set up, however, a variety of placeholders connected by a specific purpose, helping the individual find his predefined social role.
—Nikola Dietrich, 2005
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (the former Stasi building, Berlin), 2005
photographs of Stasi office and interrogation rooms for 16 billboards, 2 x 3 m
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (the former Stasi building, Berlin), 2005
photographs of Stasi office and interrogation rooms for 16 billboards, 2 x 3 m
Untitled (Meldestellen)
2003
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (Berliner Meldestellen), 2003
series of 13 lambda-prints, 38 × 57 cm
Carla Åhlander investigates the properties of spaces that, within power structures, become effective instances of control and discipline. The faceless architecture of such spaces and their setting to arrange and order humanity conveys the person into the bureaucratic logic of the subject to be managed. In Åhlander’s image the countless stories of what is to be recorded are characteristically illustrated with dark humour in the form of black botches over red chairs.
—press release
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (Meldestellen), 2003
series of 13 lambda-prints, 38 x 57 cm
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (Meldestellen), 2003
series of 13 lambda-prints, 38 x 57 cm
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (Meldestellen), 2003
series of 13 lambda-prints, 38 x 57 cm
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (Meldestellen), 2003
series of 13 lambda-prints, 38 x 57 cm
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (Meldestellen), 2003
series of 13 lambda-prints, 38 x 57 cm
Carla Åhlander, Untitled (Meldestellen), 2003
series of 13 lambda-prints, 38 x 57 cm
Five Versions of a Woman Being
2001
Carla Åhlander, 5 Versions of a Woman Being Interrupted from Crossing a Street, 2001
series of 5 C-prints on aluminium dibond, 18 × 27 cm
Carla Åhlander, 5 Versions of a Woman Being Interrupted from Crossing a Street, 2001
series of 5 C-prints on aluminium dibond, 18 × 27 cm
Carla Åhlander, 5 Versions of a Woman Being Interrupted from Crossing a Street, 2001
series of 5 C-prints on aluminium dibond, 18 × 27 cm
Carla Åhlander, 5 Versions of a Woman Being Interrupted from Crossing a Street, 2001
series of 5 C-prints on aluminium dibond, 18 × 27 cm
Carla Åhlander, 5 Versions of a Woman Being Interrupted from Crossing a Street, 2001
series of 5 C-prints on aluminium dibond, 18 × 27 cm
Carla Åhlander, 5 Versions of a Woman Being Interrupted from Crossing a Street, 2001
series of 5 C-prints on aluminium dibond, 18 × 27 cm
Publications
Learn to Read
2022
, Learn to Read
Learn to Read, is a monographic survey of Carla Åhlander’s practice over the last 20 years. Often working through photographic series, Carla’s imagery uses non-verbal modes of communication as a means to open narratives and to document ‘social reality.’
The publication features 160 pages, with essays by Lars-Erik Hjertström Lappalainen, Bettina Klein and Flavia Frigeri that provide a contextual insight into Carla’s practice.
Publisher: argobooks
Publication date: March 30, 2022
Designer: Craig Sinnamon
Dimensions: 17.0 × 23.0 × 1.0 cm
ISBN-13: 978-3-948678-09-8
Carla Åhlander, Learn to Read, 2022
publication
Carla Åhlander, Learn to Read, 2022
publication
Carla Åhlander, Learn to Read, 2022
publication
Carla Åhlander, Learn to Read, 2022
publication
Carla Åhlander, Learn to Read, 2022
publication
Carla Åhlander, Learn to Read, 2022
publication
Carla Åhlander, Learn to Read, 2022
publication
Carla Åhlander, Learn to Read, 2022§
publication
Learning by doing
2019
Carla Åhlander, Learning by doing, 2019
limited edition photo book
hand-signed, limited edition photo book of 25 + 2AP
Carla Åhlander, Learning by doing, 2019
limited edition photo book
Carla Åhlander, Learning by doing, 2019
limited edition photo book
Carla Åhlander, Learning by doing, 2019
limited edition photo book
Carla Åhlander, Learning by doing, 2019
limited edition photo book
Carla Åhlander, Learning by doing, 2019
limited edition photo book
Carla Åhlander, Learning by doing, 2019
limited edition photo book
Carla Åhlander, Learning by doing, 2019
limited edition photo book
Artist biography
Education. Carla (b.1966, Lund, Sweden) studied art history, performance and photography in Sweden, Italy and Denmark between 1985 and 1994.
Select exhibitions. You do not leave traces of your memory, just of your acts., KH Künstler:innenhaus Bremen, Germany (2024); Holding Places, Belmacz, London (2024); Troubled Kinships, B-LA-M Festival, Berlin (2024); The Palliative Turn, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Germany (2022); Carla Åhlander & Camilla Løw, Belmacz, London (2022); Beuys Open Source, Belmacz, London (2021-22); Kunst im Traum, HilbertRaum, Berlin (2021); Geister (ghosts), SCOTTY, Berlin (2021); Alle Erinnerung ist Gegenwart, Neues Kunsthaus Ahrenshoop, Berlin (2019); Pelle d’oca, Villa Vertua Masolo, Italy (2019); BONE Performance Art Festival, Bern, Switzerland (2018); 9th Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, Oslo (2017); Gruezi, Kunstmuseum Olten, Olten (2016); InterKontinental, Belmacz Gallery, London (2016); Noteringar: tillstånd, platser, Fotogalleriet Format, Malmö (2014); Perspektiven, After Work, Schwartzkopffstraße nGbK, Berlin (2013); Anyone for cricket?, Kunstverein Horn, Horn (2013); Gastarbeiter, Italienisches Kulturinstitut, Wolfsburg (2012); Boredom, Essays & Observations, Berlin (2012); Mellan händelser, Martin Bryder Gallery, Lund (2011); Time is what keeps the light from reaching us, The Liverpool Biennial (2010); Gradual Change, Axel Nordin Gallery, Stockholm (2010); Immortality, TENT – Center for visual arts, Rotterdam (2009).
Awards and grants. Carla has received the Artistic Research Grant from Berlin Senate Department for Culture and has previously been the recipient of artist residencies at Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice, Künstlerhaus Lukas, Ahrenshoop, among others. She has produced series photographic works for public space in underground station Schwartzkopffstraße in Berlin (After Work/nGbK), in Cologne (The Reclaim Award) and in Vienna (Prospective Sites, Europart).
Carla lives and works in Berlin, where she teaches Photography at Bard College Berlin and at the Berlin University of the Arts.