The Institute, 2005

Gunnel Wåhlstrand

Annika Gunnarsson: Gunnel Wåhlstrand’s detailed ink washes are based on old black and white family photographs.

In the image “The Institute”, you can see how different surfaces clearly contrast with each other. The surfaces create depth. And it’s very easy to understand that what you are seeing is a true representation of reality. In fact, just a few lines are enough for you to fill the image with meaning. And yet this image is almost surreal.

Now imagine that you are the one standing in the room looking out from the State Institute for Racial Biology that existed in Uppsala between 1922 and 1959.

Racial biology is not a science that meets any methodological standards. However, in accordance with royal decree, the institute was tasked during this period with conducting research on and teaching racial biology, with the aim of studying and refining the human race.

Auguste Rodin’s well-known sculpture “The Thinker”, from 1904, stands on the windowsill. With this image Gunnel Wåhlstrand poses a number of questions about which memories remain and which are lost, as well as how we are shaped by our history. In its stillness, the view from “The Institute” conveys the oppression that several groups of people suffered as a result of the activities of the State Institute for Racial Biology.

Here, in Gunnel Wåhlstrand’s image, the concept of shadow describes both what happens when a surface is not exposed to light and what it means for something to be cast into the shadows, in a figurative sense, referring to events that do not come to light. Behind the seemingly orderly surface, there is a powerful story that needs to be remembered.