The notion of identity is explored in Pernilla Iggstrom’s work. Iggstrom’s personal relation to the cultures of South Korea and Sweden gives her license to explore their vast cultural contrasts through a visual language that negotiate painterly tensions as a metaphor.
Gestural mark makings on flat colour grounds with the cavity in the centre, acts like a filter that communicates the interior with the exterior, the past with the present, and the physical element with the psychological. The paint becomes skin. Just like fragments of an identity are glued together by a variety of experiences, the jagged painting is taking shape, similar to that of how different life experiences together make an identity.
Although Iggstrom’s work has a personal starting point, the simplified figurations offer a somewhat more universal platform.
Iggstrom was born in South Korea and grew up in Sweden. She lives and works in London.
