Performance and Video
A 25-minute soundscape unfolds in parallel with the artist’s performative actions. Moving between intimacy and disruption, immersion and distance, the work explores sound as a space where personal experiences and collective realities intersect. Through the use of the body, voice, and harmonica, the performance reflects on the fragility and complexity of human existence in the face of the simultaneous coexistence of everyday banalities and the persistent presence of war.
Staffan Westerlund (*1950) is a visual and conceptual artist based in Härnösand in northern Sweden. His artistic practice is characterized by an intuitive and unpredictable approach that seeks encounters between the personal and the public, the banal and the extraordinary, and the abstract and the figurative. Painting serves as a tool of resistance, opening up spaces for questions and capturing moments of both clarity and uncertainty. His work with sound and performance explores the boundaries between peace and violence, fiction and reality.
Over the course of his artistic career, Westerlund studied film and photography at the former Dramatiska Institutet (now Stockholm University of the Arts), as well as fine art and, more recently, sound art. He also taught for many years in preparatory art programs. Since the 1970s, he has exhibited his work throughout Sweden in art centres, museums, and exhibition spaces, including Sundsvalls Museum, Luleå Konsthall, Liljevalchs in Stockholm, Västerbottens Museum, Fylkingen Stockholm, and Bildmuseet in Umeå. Most recently, he participated in the Supermarket Art Fair in Stockholm in May 2026. Westerlund is also a board member of the Swedish umbrella organization for community-based artists’ studios.
Webseite: www.staffanwesterlund.com
Instagram: @staffan49
Exhibition from September 26. until October 11. at: HAUNT
RELATED EVENTS
Performance: September 26. 7 pm / HAUNT
Foto: Staffan Westerlund © 2025