Flare-Up
Accelerator presents the solo exhibition Flare-Up with artist duo Goldin+Senneby. The exhibition extends across Accelerator’s entire exhibition space and showcases the duo’s ongoing focus on issues of autoimmunity, accessibility, and ecology.
Illustration by Johan Hjerpe in relation to Goldin+Senneby's work 'Crying Pine Tree' (2020-2024)
About the exhibition
Drawing on the artist’s experience of living with multiple sclerosis (MS), the exhibition title, Flare-Up, refers to a treatable aspect of the disease. While the gradual progression of the condition offers limited options for intervention, the sudden flare-ups have attracted significant interest from the pharmaceutical industry, paving the way for lucrative treatments. Flare-Up also alludes to the volatile and inflammable nature of terpenes in pine resin, which has sparked investment in genetically engineered pines as a potential source of green energy.
Since 2018, Goldin+Senneby has collaborated with fiction writer Katie Kitamura, blending their artistic practice with her narrative craft to explore themes of autoimmunity—the fraught notion of a body at war with itself—and the stakes of reengineering life to defend against biological or environmental peril. Flare-Up is also the working title of a novel composed of two discrete parts, set in parallel versions of the same world. One part centers on a mysterious pine tree with a supercharged immune system, while the other follows a stranger whose identity and biological coherence are called into question as he searches for a groundbreaking treatment for his illness.
Goldin+Senneby’s research, experiments, and performances have inspired Kitamura’s fiction, which, in turn, has influenced the duo’s artistic output. Flare-Up brings this multifaceted body of work together for the first time, culminating ahead of the novel’s publication.
About Goldin+Senneby
Goldin+Senneby (since 2004) is a Stockholm-based artist duo whose work has explored how economic structures shape our society. In recent years, their practice has increasingly focused on issues of illness, care, and accessibility.
They have exhibited at the biennials in São Paulo, Istanbul, and Gwangju; held solo exhibitions at The Power Plant in Toronto, Kadist in Paris, and e-flux in New York; and their works are included in the public collections of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Credits
The body of work in this exhibition was first initiated in connection to a research visit at the MIT program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) in the spring of 2018. It has been developed together with the art and literature magazine Triple Canopy; has been generously supported by the Swedish Research Council (2020-2024); and received additional support from a residency at Amant, New York (2022).
Since 2023, Accelerator has collaborated with the Anthropocene Laboratory at the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. Goldin+Senneby are the first artists to be invited to take part in the research programme’s activities. The exhibition includes a commission from the Anthropocene Laboratory.