Havremagasinet

This exhibition includes works by Anna Zvyagintseva, Em’kal Eyongakpa, Inas Halabi, Jenny Nordmark, PhosFATE – Mohamed Sleiman Labat & Pekka Niskanen and wiklundwiklund.

Part of the homeland of the Sámi, Boden became a military centre in the late 19th century, thus implementing restrictive policies toward foreign visitors, and has been a crucial point in Norrbotten's railway system. More recently, the town has undergone urban and social transformations, attracting individuals from around the world, either for the green-industries or as asylum seekers fleeing their countries. Boden bears witness to the entanglement of material resource extraction and displacement of people and cultures, and its inseparability from wider geopolitical dynamics of militarization and violence, locally and globally.

The positions in this exhibition explore these correlations. Through these lenses, the Western Sahara desert finds a kinship with Norrbotten. As the processing of phosphorus currently shapes new industrial endeavours in Norrbotten, phosphate mining in Western Sahara has not only affected the Sahrawi community in Algerian refugee camps but has also disrupted the Baltic Sea.

Norrbotten’s Iron Ore Line echoes the railway system from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the remains of processes of extraction and colonisation continue to loom over local populations.

The individuals and communities from diverse corners of the globe who encounter a second home in Boden, find distant echoes to those in geopolitical conflicts, such as the ongoing civil war in anglophone Cameroon or the invasion in Ukraine.

The extraction and trajectory of resources are inseparable from our built environments, from territorial to domestic scales. The vanished town of Messaure shows the transience of places and communities within Norrbotten, affected by wider systems driven by economic forces.

We hope this exhibition provides a glimpse of our entanglement with one-another and with wider world-shaping processes, not only in their challenges but also in their inspiring possibilities.

This exhibition correlates with others in Luleå, Kiruna, and Boden’s train station. We invite you to visit them, read our curatorial text, and explore more at www.luleabiennalen.se or via this QR code.

– Aude Christel Mgba and Bruno Alves de Almeida
Artistic Directors, The Luleå Biennial 2024 –On the Threshold of 1:1

Opening hours & accessibility

See further information about opening hours and accessibility on Havremagasinet's website.