Artist in Residence, Stockholm, 4 May–25 October 2026

Josefin Arnell (born 1984 in Sweden) is an artist and filmmaker working between Amsterdam and Sweden. Her work addresses the aesthetics and politics of violence and social hierarchies. She uses humour and the monstrous to unsettle the ways in which these structures affect the individual. Her loosely structured narratives stage fragile or absurd realities in which characters attempt to navigate contemporary infrastructures shaped by impossible demands. She is interested in how storytelling can function as a sociopolitical activity. Her practice often unfolds through participatory processes.

Photo: Manuel Gorkiewicz

Josefin Arnell

During her stay at IASPIS, Josefin will begin research for a new film project. The work is structured around two central figures: Kära Mor, a phantasmagorical and religiously charged figure from eighteenth-century Funäsdalen in Härjedalen, and a specific farmstead whose functions have shifted between a guesthouse and the site of Sweden’s first county museum. Drawing on local essays, gossip, family letters and archival material, she traces a history of transformation across generations, shaped by conflict, loss and reinvention. The research for the film moves through feminist and emancipatory struggles in rural and peripheral environments, entangled with the rise of tourism and forms of economic and cultural control.

Josefin holds an MA from the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam (2024). She was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (2015–16), won the Theodora Niemeijer Prize for emerging female artists in the Netherlands (2018), and was nominated for the Prix de Rome, Netherlands (2023). Her work has been shown at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; WIELS, Brussels; Cell Project Space, London; Index, Stockholm; UKS, Oslo; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Frac Normandie; Sissi Club, Marseille; Athens Biennale; Auto Italia, London; Kunsthalle Münster; Nordic House, Reykjavik; Rencontres Internationales, Paris/Berlin; Riga International Film Festival; and IDFA International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam.