Hugo Mugerwa Klockars explores tenderness, memory and Black interiority in ‘Surfacing’, presented as Southnord’s UPNEXT 2026 exhibition.
2 September 2026
What does it mean to mend something without concealing the wound? In ‘Surfacing’, Swedish artist Hugo Mugerwa Klockars turns to sewing, assembling, and careful repair to consider how vulnerability might exist alongside strength. Presented at Southnord in Stockholm, the exhibition marks Klockars as the winner of UPNEXT 2026 and is curated by Sarah Tawiah Svärd.
Born in 2003 and currently studying at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Klockars works across large-scale, multi-medium installations that engage tenderness, fragility, impermanence and memory. Images, books and collages are stitched together by hand, transforming the slow process of making into an intimate gesture of attention. For Klockars, sewing becomes a way to process and heal, bringing fragmented materials into new relationships while allowing what has been obscured to surface.
At the exhibition’s centre is a compelling consideration of Black interiority and the possibilities of care. Through mending and assembling, Klockars asks how acts of tenderness might resist erasure, positioning vulnerability not as weakness, but as a space from which resilience can emerge.
This exhibition will be on view at Southnord, Stockholm, from 9 September until 30 October 2026.
