CLASS, GENDER AND CONSUMPTION

Consumer Woman is a Christmas story in image and text. It is about the newly-wed Mrs K in Skärholmen. Lena Svedberg drew her as an ample lady obsessed with satisfying herself through sex, food, advertising and media. Mrs K is on the toilet; a literal description of how the shit that goes in one end eventually comes out the other, and how the middle class is harmed by the “new” media society and its advertising.

The middle class, or the bourgeoisie, was under constant criticism throughout the 20th century. The gist of it is that the middle class does not take responsibility for its social position and their intermediary standing in the class society but have become a “soulless” group without aims or ambitions. Svedberg despises their complacency and their lack of a more explicit political and active standpoint.

Several artists chose to protest against the social change and welfare state that evolved after the Second World War. Many people marched in demonstrations to protest through various actions against how people in positions of authority abused their power in general. The protests could be both aggressive and offensive and often caused heated debates about the outrageousness and vulgarity of the manifestations. The word vulgar comes from the Latin vulgaris, “common”, or vulgus, “ordinary people”.

Svedberg’s drawings convey both disgust and indignation. In the work Consumer Woman she ruthlessly ridicules the government, big finance and the bourgeois attitude to life. But her images are also profoundly existential. These portrayals of the Zeitgeist criticise society and express her anger over the world’s social injustices. How would you describe your contemporary world?