Liselotte Watkins, Edicola Due
5 September – 12 October
Liselotte Watkins is one of Sweden’s most distinctive visual storytellers and artists. At the centre of the exhibition Edicola Due – for Liljevalchs is a hexagonal chapel made up of 36 assembled paintings, forming a space rich with symbolism.
Liselotte Watkins weaves together art history, philosophy, activism, and popular culture with a personal imprint. Utilising an explicitly analogue and tactile method, she creates works in which every detail carries meaning – drawn from real-life encounters, books, printed materials, and physical environments rather than digital sources. In Edicola Due – for Liljevalchs, references can be found to artists and figures such as David Hockney, Carla Lonzi, and Carla Accardi, Donatello’s David, Dante and Marie Laure de Decker, as well as contemporary symbols like the Nike logo.
In connection with the exhibition, a special publication has been produced for Liljevalchs, in collaboration between Liselotte Watkins and Helene Fuchs. The paper contains newly written texts on topics ranging from one of Cleopatra Pia Tolomei’s last relatives, to camel libraries, Don Quixote, and a story about how young girls were rescued from Kabul.
The title Edicola Due refers both to the small kiosks that once characterised cities like Rome and to the miniature chapels still found throughout Italian villages. Watkins, who now lives in Tuscany, draws inspiration from the Italian cultural environment and her overflowing studio cosmos – where books, images, and fragments become visual narratives.
–Edicola Due is a kind of requiem for my love of the newsstand, that place that was always part of the streetscape but is now disappearing. I still remember the feeling of seeing my illustration in The New York Times for the first time. It was magical. That feeling, that presence, is what I want to preserve in Edicola Due, says Liselotte Watkins.
Watkins broke through internationally as a fashion illustrator in the late 1990s with commissioners such as Prada, Vogue, Elle, and The New Yorker. Over the past decade, she has fully devoted herself to her independent art practice, creating a unique visual language where the female body, symbolism, and everyday objects gain new meanings.
Curator for the exhibition is Joanna Sandell Wright.
