Marcia Harvey Isaksson in conversation on curating the Afro-Nordic condition, material histories, and the politics of landscape.
In ‘Earthscape’, curator Marcia Harvey Isaksson brings together eight artists of African descent whose practices move across photography, painting, ceramics, textiles, and sculpture, tracing a shared yet deeply heterogeneous Afro-Nordic experience. As the second exhibition drawn from the Southnord Collection, following ‘Mindscape’ in 2025, ‘Earthspace’ extends an ongoing inquiry into how diasporic identities are shaped through land, memory, and material.
Here, landscape is neither neutral nor fixed; it is a site of extraction and inheritance, of spiritual continuity and geopolitical fracture. From mineral archives displaced by colonial violence to discarded industrial matter reworked into painterly surfaces, the works in ‘Earthscape’ foreground the entanglement of body and terrain, and the uneven conditions that continue to structure global production and ecological precarity.
Theresa Traore Dahlberg, artwork detail. Photo Karin Björkquist.
Speaking with ART AFRICA, Harvey Isaksson reflects on curatorial frameworks that hold multiplicity, the role of Southnord in reconfiguring Black presence within Nordic art histories, and the ways in which exhibition-making becomes a form of spatial storytelling. What emerges is a meditation on Earth as both material and metaphor, a shared ground shaped by histories of rupture, and a space through which new imaginaries might take form.
Suzette Bell-Roberts: ‘Earthscape’ brings together artists working across photography, painting, ceramics, textiles, and found materials, each engaging questions of land, body, and memory. How did you shape a curatorial framework that allows these diverse practices to speak to one another within the Southnord collection?
Marcia Harvey Isaksson: ‘Earthscape’ is the second Southnord Collection exhibition, following ‘Mindscape’, which was shown in 2025. Both the shows and the collection, in general, aim to present the diverse voices of AfroNordic artists as they gather in dialogue around similar themes. The African diaspora in the Nordics is a heterogeneous group whose lived experiences are complex and vary widely across individuals. The curatorial framework for the entire platform, not just the collection exhibitions, is to make space for the manifestations of these experiences.
Marcia Harvey Isaksson, artwork detail. Photo: Karin Björkquist.
The exhibition approaches landscape not only as a physical site, but also as a space of memory and inheritance. How does ‘Earthscape’ invite audiences to reconsider the relationship between environment, identity, and belonging?
The works in ‘Earthscape’ reflect on both the geopolitical and the personal. Audiences are invited on a journey guided by the artists’ works, which offer different entry points into the themes of environment, identity, and belonging.
Michelle Eistrup’s work, Mineral Emissaries, Edelopal Terra Mineralia (2020) and the accompanying sound piece, Mineral Emissaries Sound Collage (2024) by Michelle Eistrup and Anders Juhl centre minerals from Western Australia housed in the Terra Mineralia Collection in Freiberg and Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig; rocks that were taken from the homelands of the indigenous Noongaars and Bardi peoples of Australia. In this work, the stones serve as ancestral storytellers who testify to the shift that occurred when caves, once sacred places for deep reflection, became sites of material predation and extraction by colonisers.
Liisa Irmelen, Liwata, artwork detail. Photo Karin Björkquist.
Theresa Traore Dahlberg’s work, Blue Mountain #1 and#2 (2025), is composed of discarded copper circuit boards from a now-defunct Swedish factory, once used in technologies ranging from automobiles and access systems to medical imaging and military equipment. The factory’s closure, a consequence of global economic shifts and industrial relocation, speaks to broader narratives of labour, obsolescence and technological change. By removing these boards from their functional roles and transforming them into surfaces for oil painting, Theresa invites reflection on the material, social and historical dimensions of production.
Liisa Irmelen Liwata’s work, Formation (2022), examines the relations between body, country, and language from the perspective of the formation of one’s cultural identity. It is a spiritual exploration of oneself, one’s place in the world, and one’s navigation within it. Liisa-Irmelen ponders: If she were divided into countries, how many countries could her body encompass? What would it feel like, and how would one move around in there?
Alexandra Mitiku’s work, That’s Why They Don’t Pick the Bones (2025), is a portrait of two different ways of consuming – to take with one hand or with two. It is an image of entanglement, blending clay and indigo to mirror the togetherness of body/land and spirit. The earthy pigments in the work come from the clays the artist collects on her annual travels from Finland to Korea and Ethiopia, and are an attempt to build new worlds through these borderless soils. The additional use of indigo paste, as well as ink and charcoal, both made from burnt wood, is driven by a desire to learn about different ways to connect with the land and to be a conduit for its histories. The work reflects on how growing up in scarcity can affect one’s relationship to consumerism, whether it is food, relationships or material luxury.
Sasha-Huber, Earthscape, artwork detail. Photo Karin Björkquist.
Marcia Harvey Isaksson’s work, She Had Two, So She Gave Him One’ (2024), is a diptych that portrays Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro. The work is inspired by the tale of how the two great mountains were separated by a man-made border during the scramble for Africa. Queen Victoria, representing Britain, and Kaiser Wilhelm II, representing Germany, were key figures in the land grab, with their nations competing fiercely for territory. The new borders were formalised at the Berlin Conference in 1885. The copper thread and the petroleum-based mesh represent the natural resources that drove the colonial powers to rape the land then and that continue to drive imperial capitalism to do the same today. The artist reflects on how these two mountains have stood side by side for millions of years, bearing witness to the rise and fall of civilisations, and how they will continue to stand long after humanity has made itself extinct.
Viola Nimuhamya’s work, One at a Time (2025), is part of an ongoing exploration of how single units bind together and grow into large constellations in which shadow play, materiality, and craft are central. The resulting sculptural objects are reminiscent of plant life from the land or sea, stretching and coiling as though in search of light. Viola explores how repetition in weaving and crochet can become a quiet ritual of meditation, healing and rest. The discarded fabrics she works with enter her studio as archives – fragments of global circuits of consumption and disposal. These embedded histories stretch across entangled geographies – from her new home in Norway, where she has sourced the materials, to Uganda, where the craft techniques were passed on to her by her matriarchs.
Marcia Harvey Isaksson. Photo Karin Björkquist.
Sasha Huber’s work, Mami Wata (2022), is part of the Remedy for Life series, in which the artist returns to her roots and her relationship with water. Starting with the importance of the Rhine River, which she grew up next to, the body of work also reflects on the way she finds a sense of being at home next to lakes and the sea after relocating to Finland over twenty years ago, and how the sea also connects her to the shores of her maternal home in faraway Haïti. Remedy for Life further underscores the urgency of caring for all waters, which are gradually diminishing and, in some places, are polluted by the effects of colonialism and industrial exploitation. Mami Wata is a revered water spirit in African and Afro-Caribbean traditions, symbolising fertility, healing, wealth and profound transformation.
Dyami Rafn Andrews’ work, Tremors Above (2025), is part of a series titled Motion, Mass & Texture, an exploration of landscape through abstraction that focuses on the impact of human choices and decisions. The series presents the earth in a recognisable but clearly altered and unfamiliar state. Something once known but now lost. The landscapes are inspired by a conglomeration of the artist’s memories of the Icelandic landscape, distilling an internal experience of the space and not necessarily referencing a specific area or mountain. The stark, sublime beauty of the terrain belies the sad reality that the grandeur of the natural world is under threat and subject to destruction and change, due to the climate catastrophe. Always void of human life, the paintings emphasise the inhospitable conditions that result.
Alexandra-Mitiku, Earthscape. Photo Karin Björkquist.
Many of the works foreground material processes, such as clay, indigo, wood, copper, and reclaimed textiles. How do these materials function conceptually in relation to histories of extraction, labour, and ecological transformation?
In many of the works, the materials used connect directly and conceptually to the histories of extraction, labour and ecological transformation the artists are concerned with. Minerals, metals, and the earth itself are fair game in the current world order, where extraction and over-consumption interplay on a lopsided field where the Global South provides the raw materials and bears the brunt of ecological damage and climate change, while the Global North still controls the means of (over-)production and capital.
‘Earthscape’ emerges from Southnord’s growing Afro-Nordic collection. How do exhibitions like this help expand narratives about Black presence and cultural production in Nordic contexts?
As a platform, Southnord is focused on expanding the normative perceptions of the Nordic art scene by consistently highlighting the creative and cultural output of Black Nordic artists. The Black presence in the Nordics goes back hundreds of years, but it has not always been documented, researched or prioritised. Southnord makes it a priority. It is important for us to tell our own stories, in our own way, and to offer them up for future generations to draw inspiration and wisdom from. We employ the same reasoning when we work with other institutions; for example, we can mention our work on programming the ‘When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting’ exhibition, curated by Koyo Kouoh and Tandazani Dhlakama, which originated at Zeitz Mocaa in Cape Town. Our whole concept with that programme was to invite Black role models in Stockholm to speak about what they see when they see themselves represented in this exhibition and in this institution, which is as much theirs as any other Stockholmers’. In this way, the local and the global converge.
Installation view, ‘Southnord Earthscape’. Photo Karin Björkquist.
Your background in interior architecture and exhibition design often informs your curatorial practice. How did spatial choreography and movement through the gallery shape the way audiences encounter the exhibition?
The Southnord gallery is a small space, just 30 square meters. It is nonetheless a room of many possibilities. When working with the spatial layout, I always have the audience in mind – what will they see first, what will they connect visually in terms of colour, material and shape; when they rest within the space, what will they have in focus. Exhibition design is spatial storytelling, and the story unfolds through the body’s movement through space. An exhibition is not complete until it meets its audience, and each meeting is unique. That way of thinking carries over into working on much larger scales, like with our upcoming Artfest main exhibition, ‘The Other Side of the Mountain’, curated in collaboration with Amos Rex in Helsinki, where the relationship between the artists’ works helps the story unfold, but also the relationship and role of all the other sites of the Artfest spread across the city.
Southnord has become an important platform for Afro-Nordic artistic dialogue. In what ways does ‘Earthscape’ contribute to conversations between African and Nordic artistic communities?
While ‘Earthscape’ roots itself in the diasporic experience of the artists, it is also firmly grounded in the universal human experience. Southnord, as a platform, is interested in exploring the specificities of the world viewed from our vantage point. We are also interested in what makes this vantage point unique – our Africanness and our Nordicness. As we work on a broader plane, our bearings facing due South, we invest in dialogue and exchange between our platform and artistic communities on the Continent through our residency programme in collaboration with Lusaka Contemporary Art Centre, which is awarded through an open call, and through our webinar series highlighting other art spaces on the Continent. Our second open call for young artists situated in the Nordics is also a way to contribute to these dialogues. Our last winner, Viola Nimuhamya, is a newly graduated MA student from the University of Bergen, originally from Uganda.
Viola Nimuhamya, artwork detail.Photo Karin Björkquist.
The title ‘Earthscape’ suggests both grounding and invitation. How do you understand the notion of “Earthscape,” and how does it frame the exhibition’s reflection on shared planetary responsibility?
The title ‘Earthscape’ aims to tie all that is earthbound, the geological and geographical, to the emotional and spiritual landscape, and to the effects of geopolitics and ecological crisis on the human experience. It is a personal mapping through the practices of 8 artists of African descent who reflect on our shared planetary responsibility and ask, “Who holds the power to make real change?”
The exhibition is on view at Southnord art space in Stockholm, Sweden, until the 29th of May 2026.
