The Galería Elba Benítez opens its 2005-2006 season with Miriam Bäckström’s (Stockholm, 1967) first solo exhibition in Madrid. Miriam Bäckström, who is currently representing Sweden at the Venice Biennale alongside Carsten Höller, has collaborated with the Galería Elba Benítez on previous projects. The exhibition Betraktaren / The viewer presents Miriam Bäckström’s second film together with her most recent work and shows the affinities between the artist’s cinematographic work and her earlier photographic output. The moving image of film, and the static image of photography, lead the spectator to question the authenticity of the image, the construction of fiction and the acceptance of predetermined roles.

  Since the beginning of her career in the mid 90’s and until last year, Miriam Bäckström has centred her work on photography, building spaces in which the human figure was noticeably absent.  In her first photo series Estate of a deceased person, 1992-1996, Miriam Bäckström portrayed the interiors of dead people’s houses. In Set Constructions, 1995-2000, she photographed film sets. In Museums, collections and reconstructions, 1999, the artist took pictures of museums such as the Ikea Corporate Museum and the Stockholm City Museum, and in the book Locations Tenerife, 2002 –part of the The Canary Islands Revisited publishing venture directed by the Galería Elba Benítez– Bäckström gathered a series of images of the island of Tenerife as possible locations for a hypothetical film. All these photographs create a first impression of normality, but as one looks more carefully, underlying mechanisms come to light awakening a range of different readings and interpretations of the images. Bäckström’s photographs question the veracity of photography, by casting doubt on the immediacy the image seems to depict, and at the same time they are an alternative approach to portraiture. Man, quite noticeably absent from these series, is at the same time their main character. All these spaces –whether found or constructed– are testaments and agents in the stories. The rooms and sets invite the spectator to imagine stories using the spaces and objects that can be seen therein.

  Since 2004, Miriam Bäckström’s work has undergone major changes affecting both medium and content. The exhibition Rebecka, presented at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel, represents a turning point in the artist’s career. It was at this solo exhibition that Miriam Bäckström presented a video for the first time (Rebecka DVcam 42min.). This piece, also presented at ArtbaselMiamiBeach04 and at ARCO O5 by the Galería Elba Benítez, is based on an interview between Rebecka Hemse, a well-known Swedish actress, and the artist. Subtle signs give the spectator the impression that this is no ordinary interview and is actually a mixture of fact and fiction. The Rebecka project is accompanied by the book Anonymous Interviews and by photographs taken during filming, some of which can be seen in this exhibition at the Galería Elba Benítez. It is also the first time that Miriam Bäckström was to accompany her work with texts that she employed, on certain instances, as material for her film screenplay. Another medium new to the artist’s work is sound. In the piece Amplified Pavilion made for the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the artist made a sound piece in collaboration with Carsten Höller. By means of a loudspeaker system that reproduced the ambient sound of the pavilion, this work heightened and disturbed the experience of presence and communication with the public by blurring distinctions between the  inner and outer distances and space.

Also for the Venice Biennale, Miriam Bäckström and Carsten Höller made the project All images of an Anonymous person 2005. As was the case with Rebecka this project is also a portrait, in that case the portrait of a young anonymous woman through a collection of 3,147 photographs - all photographs ever taken of her-. To make All images of an Anonymous person Miriam Bäckström and Carsten Höller published an advert in the press calling for anonymous candidates to send in pictures illustrating their lives. The outcome of this work was the publication of a book in collaboration with the Venice Biennale and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in which the pictures, collected in the order in which the photographs were received as opposed to chronologically, lead the reader-viewer to imagine the life of this young woman. A project of a similar nature was The last image made in 2003 by both artists. On this occasion, Miriam Bäckström and Carsten Höller published a book with an assortment of photographs of people, taken just before something happened to change their lives forever.

In 2005, Miriam Bäckström made her second film Betraktaren / The Viewer (HDV 68 min.) presented recently at the Biennial of Contemporary Art of Gothenburg. Rebecka Hemse returns again to play the main part in the film, but this time she shares the screen with a second actor ,Tomas Pontén. Miriam Bäckström began making the film without a screenplay. The plot emerged in an improvised way, the result of meetings and discussions with the actors. Once again fact and fiction are fused together. The actors play characters but these performances are often based on their own thoughts and reflections and sometimes even on Miriam Bäckström’s written notes. The action takes place in the space that separates Rebecka Hemse and Tomas Pontén. The space of the room in which the installation has been built embodies the distance between Rebecka Hems, Tomas Pontén and the viewer. A mirror resting on the floor reflects the image of the film. Betraktaren / The viewer, the second film of a trilogy, makes numerous references to the previous work by the artist.

  In 2004, Miriam Bäckström had solo exhibitions –presenting Rebecka– at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel and at the Centre Culturel Suedois in Paris, among others. In 2003, she had exhibitions at the Nils Staerk Gallery in Copenhagen, at the Nordenhake Gallery in Stockholm, with the exhibition Apartments and, in 2002, at the Centro de Arte in Salamanca. In 2005 –besides participating at the Venice Biennale– she took part in the group exhibitions Romance, curated by Adriano Pedrosa at the Cristina Guerra Gallery in Lisbon, in the Biennial of Contemporary Art of Gothenburg, in the International Film Festival of Rotterdam and in the Colección Telefónica exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Vigo.

Pia Ogea