Hasch Hisch

On a pink painted table with visible wood grain is a pile of porcelain figurines. This painting is from a series that Mamma Andersson calls “crime scene pictures”. The broken figurines seem to indicate an event that has escaped the viewer. China ornaments like these were used to smuggle hashish in the 1970s. In an interview, the artists says, “But it doesn’t really matter what was inside of them. It could have been sugar for all that it matters. I find the shattered female faces interesting. There is a gaze looking out at you, but they are not people. They might as well have been bones. Humanity has been shattered.” In her painterly practice, Karin Mamma Andersson initiates dialogues with living and dead artists, using their images as inspiration for her own works.