There was a wound; we dwelled
Event
Date: Thursday 4 September 2025
Time: 17.00 – 19.00
Location: Haninge konsthall
Curated by Isa Van den Wouwer as part of a degree project within the Curating Art International Master’s Programme in close collaboration with Haninge konsthall.
Vernissage: 4 September, 17:00 – 19:00.
Collective reading: 6 September, 13:00 – 15:00.
Hosted by Sam Druant and Maria Hardin.
“Ill feelings make you both impressionable and hard. To stop yourself feeling suddenly diffuse, as if you are disintegrating, you make yourself small and solid – impenetrable. You appear self-contained because you spend most of your energy trying to hold all the parts of yourself together.”
Alice Hattrick, Ill Feelings, 2021
There was a wound; we dwelled brings together the multidisciplinary practices of Sam Druant, Maria Hardin, Anna Amalie Richelsen, and Sara Wylie, laying bare invisible female pain and neglected wounds. As a visitor, you are invited to encounter how existing in crip time means relating to temporality, linearity, and productivity in radically different terms. As such, new rhythms conform to the body's condition, rather than the other way around. Within this exhibition, the discourse of bodily failures and interior unrest faces the body’s potential. The artists draw on iconographic motifs and symbolism to contemplate the mourning of the body we once knew, as we embrace its reimagined version.
Female wounds take many shapes: they may lie dormant, carry the weight of guilt, or remain undiagnosed. The title of the exhibition There was a wound; we dwelled, drawn from Leslie Jamison’s essay Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain, gestures toward the shame projected onto female sick bodies, cast as monstrous or hysterical, both in past and present. This sense of otherness, within a sphere where health is the norm, seeps into us - rendering women to feel distorted, bypassed, undesirable. The works in the exhibition relate to a persistent tension within the body, wavering between sickness and health, in search of a language to express the felt ambiguities and wounds.
Our bodies are porous, relational, entangled. Far from isolated, they are shaped by an inherent relationality that lies at the centre of the exhibition. Druant, Hardin, Richelsen and Wylie present their artistic practice as a manifesto to introduce new structures of being and caring. By constructing a web of relationships rooted in collectivity and empathy, bodies may move beyond individualism. There was a wound; we dwelled welcomes visitors to encounter, stay, rest, and dwell – in whatever capacity that may be.
A collective reading, hosted by Sam Druant and Maria Hardin, will complement the exhibition on Saturday 6th of September. The gathering will take place from 13.00 – 15:00, and becomes a site for collectively questioning the ways our bodies exist in their relationality – towards the world we inhabit, healing, labor, rest, and the capitalist systems we navigate.
Feel free to bring a piece of your own writing or the writing of someone you love to share (max. 500 words). The reading will start at 13:30h. The artists will be present for 2 hours. You are welcome to stay at a pace that resonates with you. The venue is wheelchair accessible, with seating options for all.
Join, linger, contribute
The International Master's programme in Curating, including Art, Management and Law is a two-year curatorial education. It is a collaboration between Art History (together with the schools of Business and Law) at the University together with prominent art institutions in Stockholm. Curating Art is in equal shares an academic and practice based education.
Last updated: August 21, 2025
Source: Department of Culture and Aesthetics