Helen Broms Sandberg

In autumn 2022, Helen Broms Sandberg will show her work The Seven Works of Mercy in the film room at Liljevalchs+.

The Seven Works of Mercy is a video installation inspired by Caravaggio's altarpiece of the same title from 1607 in Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples. In the painting, Caravaggio had characters drawn from stories from both legend, mythology and the Old Testament interpret the Seven Works of Mercy: to give water to the thirsty, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the sick, to protect the homeless, to visit the imprisoned, to bury the dead.

The video work consists of two parts: the documentation of a performance recorded in the Basilica San Pietro in Tuscania, and a video installation comprising seven screens. In the documentation of the church, stretched canvases have been placed on which a number of performers interpret the various acts. At the same time, close-ups of each scene are shown in loop on seven synchronised screens, with the blank canvases constituting the "space" for a kind of tableaux vivants.

"After a long fascination with Caravaggio's painting, I started working on The Seven Works of Mercy four years ago. During that time, the images changed with the global chaos the world suddenly found itself in; the contrasts became clearer and even the same image had taken on a stronger meaning. How can the acts of mercy be interpreted from a universal perspective? Has the meaning of the acts changed since they were written in the Bible or Caravaggio interpreted them in his altarpiece? How do we describe the discomfort that arises between the need to perform an act and at the same time experiencing a sense of futility? We ask questions, but get no answers. We perform actions and hope for change."

As in Caravaggio's painting, the same questions are asked here, which can be interpreted endlessly, as in the continuous movement of the loop, without beginning and without end. The sound in The Seven Works of Mercy is based on Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei, where parts of the original sacred piece seek to recall the religious origins of the work but are interrupted by modified tones and voices that reconnect with the present.

In The Seven Works of Mercy , as in her previous works, Helen Broms Sandberg has used multiple synchronised projections to simultaneously show parallel worlds and dissolve the passages between time and space in the same story.

Helen Broms Sandberg has since the 1990s worked primarily with video installations, but also with photography, painting, sculpture and text in which she poses questions about identity, private and collective memory.

Her work is characterised by a non-linear and poetic way of telling stories inspired by theatre, early film, literature, legends and rituals, moving between different states, between time and space, life and death, reality and fiction.