‘Practising Politics: The Fogelstad Women’s Citizenship School 1925–1954’, 2019

solo show, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm

‘Practising Politics: The Fogelstad Women’s Citizenship School’ is an installation for the Classroom at Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm. During the year that it was in place, community groups from the neighbourhood used it on a daily basis. The space was also designed to host public seminars, screenings and workshops looking into the history and methods of the Fogelstad Women’s Citizenship School, a radical educational experiment established in Sweden after women gained the right to vote in 1921. The school was self-organised by a group of women, many of whom had fought for female suffrage, and was active from 1925 until 1954. The courses offered aimed to educate women to participate in politics and inhabit their new roles as voting citizens. Alongside lectures by invited speakers on history, democracy and sexual health, the school’s pedagogical methods foregrounded embodied knowledge and collective experience through role play, singing and eurythmics.

In the Classroom at Tensta Konsthall viewers entered an environment based on a role-playing game developed at the Fogelstad school, to enable the women to practise political problem-solving within a fictional municipality called Kom Te Måtta. Central to the room was a curtain printed with a life-sized depiction of the students, cross-dressing as the imaginary town’s male power brokers. Many of the founders of the school were what we might now refer to as queer, and therefore it was also a space where women experimented with gender identity and sexuality. Walls covered with posters detailed the various institutions of the society that they were learning to negotiate, while a shadow play, with the outlines of these same buildings, was created by fabric hanging from the ceiling. Wooden hand-painted figurines of the students, like counters on a board, sat in a cabinet of archival material, alongside photos and board games developed by both the Swedish and British women’s suffrage movements. Artworks by Siri Derkert (1888–1973), who attended the Fogelstad School, were also included in the installation, along with an upside-down map of the world drawn in chalk onto a blackboard, seating and other elements.

This piece is part of a research project initiated by curator Hannah Zafiropoulos.