Sofia Romberg — Wildflower Tales
6 September - 5 October 2025
Opening 6 September at 18:00
Sofia Romberg, she/her (b.87 FIN, Åland Islands) is an artist-filmmaker, freelancing scenographer and costume designer. She is educated at the University of the Arts and the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm. As an artist, she is engaged in connecting intimate life with social structures and existential conditions. Asking questions about our vulnerability and changeability. Connecting past events with the present tense.
Moving image often works as the core in her installations, working both with digital and analogue techniques.
Wildflower Tales
In the 1960s and 70s a demolition frenzy took place in Stockholm wiping out large parts of the city center. This was a time with social and urban transformation en masse. Conflicting visions about a future in plural.
Suburbs grew up at the outskirts where everyday life would play out. In Vårberg, two artificial mountains were placed, designed to resemble an amphi theatre. They were built of the demolishing material from houses, blocks and blowouts from the expanding subway system. Its nickname became The Vårberg dump. The soil that covered the massive piles came from many directions. A flora that was versatile originated with time. Just like the area itself where people from over a hundred nationalities live.
Wildflower Tales is shot with 16 mm film and processed by hand with flowers and plants from the filmed locations on the mountains. A document of short scenes with landscapes, flowers, family and friends in simple poses sweeps by, ending with what then became the end of further blunt transformations in Stockholm, the riot in Kungsträdgården 1971.
A common quote from the urban planners in the 60s was the aim to create a new city for the new man. Decades later here we are, man and nature still caught in-between opposing forces in a milieu both created and suppressed. It’s a wildflower, is a flower, is a flower.
