Sara Jordenö

Sara Jordenö is a visual artist, documentary filmmaker, researcher and educator. Her work as a visual artist is informed by discussions around authorship and agency, and resides in the crossing points of institutional critique, site-specific and public art, meta-observational documentary cinema, and community-based participatory performative practice. For the past eighteen years, Jordenö’s work has been shown internationally at venues such as the Modern Museum, Stockholm, Bildmuseet, Umeå, the Kitchen and MoMA PS1, and has been featured in New York Magazine, Paletten and Modern Painters Magazine. Jordenö was an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre, Iaspis, Stockholm, NIFCA, Belgrade and Helsinki, Baltic Art Center, Visby, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program and most recently the Art & Law Residency in Brooklyn, where she researched and developed contracts in relationship to authorship and participation in collaborative and community-based practices. Jordenö’s work has been commissioned by the Public Art Agency Sweden, Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Printed Matter, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MoMA PS1, Muscarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest and the 5th Berlin Biennial.

Jordenö’s longitudinal projects often engage with a specific site or community and she typically employs a mix of methods used in fieldwork conducted by social scientists. In the process of making these works, she has collaborated with (and at times shared authorship with) sociologists, activists, community organizers and members of the communities that she investigates. Part of an international network of artists, academics and community organizers working and thinking around hidden populations, Jordenö’s work is disseminated both in social sciences, contemporary art and film.

In 2010, Jordenö exhibited The Persona Project 2000 - 2010, an archive of 7 works, at The Modern Museum, Stockholm. Her longitudinal work Diamond People, about a community surrounding a diamond factory in Northern Sweden, was exhibited in a solo exhibition at Bildmuseet Umeå (curator: Katarina Pierre)in 2010-11, at Cooper Gallery in New York City (curators: Steven Lam and Saskia Bos) in 2010 and at GIBCA - A Story within a Story (curator: Elvira Dyangani Ose) in 2015. In 2016 -17 Sara Jordeno is working with Public Art Agency Sweden on a new public art commission which consitutes the final part of Diamond People, part of the series Industrisamhälle i Förändring (curator: Lisa Rosendahl).

Since 2012 Jordenö has been involved in a close collaboration with Twiggy Pucci Garcon and other members of the underground and insular NYC Kiki Ballroom scene, a subculture for LGBTQ at-risk youth. Through this work, she has interfaced with and gained support from community-based organizations and institutions such The Door, Hetrick-Martin Institute and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among others. The collaboration is culminating in a feature documentary film, KIKI, directed by Jordenö, written by Jordeno and Pucci Garcon, and produced by Story and Hard Working Movies. KIKI will have its world premiere in January 2016, when it will screen in competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

A member of the core faculty of the Masters of Fine Arts Programme at Valand Academy, Gothenburg University, Sara Jordenö teaches courses in artistic fieldwork influenced by sociological and anthropological research methods. She has been the educational leader of contextual, site-specific and community-based projects with master students in Fine Art at Valand Academy, most notably A Temporary Roof in the rural area of Kalv outside of Gothenburg. Jordenö was the co-organiser (with Jason E. Bowman) of the international symposium Organising Art on May 17th, 2014 in Kalv. She was the lead editor of and contributor to the two-part publication A Temporary Roof: Processes & Dialogues and the 2015 Valand Yearbook. In September 2014 she was the co-organiser (with Ann-Charlotte Glasberg-Blomqvist) of the symposium Different Views on Equality with Baker Karim and Hynek Pallas at Valand Academy. In January 2015 she co-organized, with Carlos Motta and Mary Coble, the symposium The Empire of Love: Alternative Relationships and Other Possibilities at Glashuset, Valand Academy, in collaboration with Röda Sten Konsthall and The Hasselblad Foundation.

Jordenö was nominated for, and recieved an award from, the Art Matters Foundation in 2013, and has over the years received support from New York State Council of the Arts, LMCC Community Arts Fund, Malmö Kultur, Statens Kulturråd, Västra Götalandsregionen, Nordiska Kulturfonden, Konstnärsnämnden, Iaspis, NIFCA, Baltic Art Center, Film i Västerbotten, Film Väst and The Swedish Film Institute, among others. Her work is distributed by Filmform, Stockholm.