När identitet, tillhörighet och ursprung återigen är föremål för politiska gränsdragningar, framträder ”Kreoler” som en utställning om sammanblandning – om det som uppstår i möten, korsningar och översättningar. Titeln anspelar på den karibiske poeten och filosofen Édouard Glissants begrepp creolisation, som beskriver hur kulturer och subjekt ständigt förändras genom kontakt med det andra.
De medverkande konstnärerna – Juan Miguel Castillo Díaz, Loulou Cherinet, Ibrahim Elkarim, Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena, Salad Hilowle och Valeria Montti Colque – ger kropp åt denna tanke genom sina verk. Tillsammans bildar de en kraftfull röst i samtidskonsten som speglar några av vår tids mest angelägna frågor – genom personliga berättelser och visuellt djup.
Flera av dem har bakgrund i diaspora eller bär erfarenheter av migration, exil och kulturell förflyttning. Deras konstnärskap undersöker identitet, rotlöshet och kulturell bastardering – att vara ”den andra” och samtidigt sig själv.

“When you say ‘Creolité’, you fix its definition of being once and for all in time and place. Now I think that being is in a state of perpetual change. And what I call creolisation is the very sign of that change. In creolisation, you can change, you can be with the Other, you can change with the other while being yourself.”
— Édouard Glissant

Loulou Cherinet (b.1970)

studied at Addis Ababa University School of Fine Art & Design and the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. She has had solo exhibitions in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Addis Ababa, Prague, Krakow, Lüneburg, and Jakarta. Her works have been featured in art biennials in São Paulo, Venice, Bamako and Sydney, as well as at Manifesta 8 and Momentum 7. Loulou Cherinet is at the moment professor of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Valeria Montti Colque (b.1978)

lives and works in Stockholm is a Chilean-Swedish artist who works in a variety
of expressions and media. Her installations often take the form of characters, gods, and mythological figures, incorporating symbolic names from the Andean cosmovision and a mix of different languages. Valeria was selected to represent Chile in the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, with the proposal “Cosmonación” by curator Andrea Pacheco. In 2023 she took part in the 3º edition of El Cairo Biennale, Something Else, Off, organized by cultural activist Moataz Nasr and curator Simon Njami.

Salad Hilowle (b.1986)

holds an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art (2020) and a BFA from Konstfack (2018) in Stockholm.
In spring 2023 Hilowle had a solo exhibition at Eskilstuna Art Museum featuring his acclaimed video work Vanus Labor, alongside sculpture and photography, as well as the new performance work Journey of Unity. Solo exhibitions include Kulturhuset Stockholm, Gävle Konstcentrum in collaboration with the County Museum of Gävleborg and the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in connection with the Bernadotte Scholarship Hilowle received in 2020. He has also exhibited at Bildmuseet, Umeå, Kalmar Art Museum, CCI Fabrika, Moscow, GIBCA (Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art).

Ibrahim Elkarim (b.1942)
He is a photographer and visual artist. Elkarim began his artistic education in Darmstadt in what was then West Germany in 1964-65. In Sweden he studied at the art college and at the Bror Marklund Art Academy. He was an assistant in the public decoration of Karolinska Hospital in 1978. Elkarim has also worked as a care assistant in home care in Stockholm. His work is part of the collection of the Modern Museum of Art in Stockholm.

Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena (b.1971)

Juan-Pedro has divided his life between Montevideo, where he was born
and partially raised, and Stockholm, where he arrived as a refugee in the late 70’s.
His work has exhibited extensively internationally, among other in the exhibition Delays and Revolutions at the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003; My Private Heroes Marta Herford Museum, 2006; The Moderna Exhibition, The Modern Museum of Art, Stockholm, 2006; Favored Nations, 5th Momentum Biennial, Moss, 2009; 1st Biennale of The Americas, Denver, 2013, The School of Kyev, Kyev, 2015; University Of Disaster at the 57th Venice Biennale, 2017

Juan Miguel Castillo Díaz (b.1952)

He lived part of his childhood in the Pedro de Valdivia saltpeter mine in the
pampas of northern Chile, this left a mark on him. He studied architecture for two years at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso. Later, in Santiago, he studied engraving with Eduardo Vilches, at the Art School of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile as a free student. In Santiago, between 1978 and 1983, he was a member of the C.A.D.A Art Action Collective, a group of visual artists, writers and sociologists, made up of Lotty Rosenfeld, Diamela Eltit, Fernando Balcells, Juan Castillo and Raúl Zurita, with whom he carried out various art actions and installations both in Chile and abroad. Since 1982 he has carried out most of his work abroad, and since 1998 he has returned to Chile frequently to continue collaborating and working with various spaces and visual artists.