Hanni Kamaly
Hanni Kamaly (b. 1988, Norway, lives and works in Malmö) is an artist whose interdisciplinary works encompass sculpture, video and performance, investigating the process of alienation and the devaluation of the subject. Central to Kamaly’s practice is the human body, working as a home of the subject as well as a projection for norms, ideologies and power structures. Using post-colonial theory as a starting point, they explore how the notion of the Other is shaped and consolidated through historical writing and visual culture.
Kamaly’s work has been widely exhibited at institutions and spaces, including Malmö Konsthall; 15th Sharjah Biennial; 34th Biennial São Paulo; Luleå Biennial 2018; and Accelerator, Stockholm.
ALI BEN MOHAMED
2024-2025
Steel, 250 × 36 × 150 cm
Courtesy of the artist
MUSSARD YAHIA
2022
Steel, 81 × 57 × 160 cm
Courtesy of the artist
The sculptures are named after individuals listed as “foreigners” in Swedish Racial Types (1919), a book by Swedish eugenicist Herman Lundborg. The portraits were published anonymously, accompanied only by descriptions such as “racially mixed, criminal” or “vagrant”. Kamaly subverts this dehumanizing process by abstracting the bodily presence of these individuals, once reduced to objects of the gaze and subjected to categorization by those in power. The artist’s gesture powerfully exposes how language can be wielded to classify, control, and diminish human beings – a mechanism that continues to echo in contemporary political discourse used to justify military operations and deportations.