Mussels - In the Shell with Åsa Jungnelius

AWARDED SVENSK BOKKONST 2024 - Best Swedish book design

The meeting of two great creative minds. In "Mussels" we meet glass artist Åsa Jungnelius — in the studio, at home — through Märta Thisner's camera lens. It is an intimate portrait of an artist who constantly pushes the boundaries of her medium. So too is Thisner. In her bold portraits she maneuvers around the pitfalls of portrait photography.

From the publisher:
Märta Thisner is one of Sweden’s most prominent photographers. Image-search her name and you’ll find a cross-section of recent cultural figures from the worlds of dance, music and literature. Her portraits have an immediate readability, a refined contrast between a careful gaze and the brutal contours of her flash, which seems equally suited to rock and poetry as it does to still-lifes with glass sculptures.

This is how she first came into contact with Åsa Jungnelius — at a photo shoot for the Public Luxury exhibition at Arkdes in 2018. Jungnelius is one of the most respected designers and artists in the country, constantly renegotiating the relationship between the two forms. Although glass is her primary element, Jungnelius’ work is to be considered contemporary art, with its integral parts of social commentary and criticism. Mussels is a portrait of Jungnelius in her natural habitat 2018–2024.

Thisner is present as the seeds are being sown in the studio and when they’re harvested in the garden in Månsamåla or at the glass- works in Kosta. In the photographs: a not-quite-feral cat, a thinned forest, a unique sculpture with an inner universe. The living encounter the withered, the everyday is visited by the sublime and braided together with ropes of many colors. Openness prevails. The unpaginated pages might seem random or like fragments of memory. Close your eyes and they are still there. What do we remember? What lingers is reformulated over time and assembled in new sequences. In an infinity, relative to life.