Johanna Billing (Jönköping, Sweden, 1973; lives and works in Stockholm)
Johanna has been making video works since 1999 that weave together music, movement and rhythm. Merging the production modes of collective live events and workshops with a cinematic language, Billing in part directs the participants and in part activates a series of improvisations around the notion of performance and the possibility it holds to explore issues of the public and the private as well as the individual in the society as a whole. Billing often addresses political climates and cultural specificities, but more importantly she transforms, through a documentary method, her filmmaking in a fictive space to examine actual and contrived events and how that filmed compression illuminates their overlap. Billing’s films often involve music, which in her hands becomes a tool for communication, memory and reconstruction.
Recent solo exhibitions include Each Moment Presents What Happens, Whitechapel Gallery (2023-24); In Purple, Kalmar konstmuseum, Kalmar, Sweden; Each Moment Presents What Happens, Jan Mot, Brussels (both 2022); In Purple, Riksidrottsmuseet, Stockholm (2021); In Purple, Hollybush Gardens, London (2020); 15 Years of You Don’t Love Me Yet, Teatro Garibaldi/Galeria Laveronica, Modica, Italy (2018); I’m Lost Without Your Rhythm, Trondheim Kunst-museum, Norwary (2017); Keeping Time, Villa Croce, Genova (2016), I’m Gonna Live Anyhow until I Die, the MAC, Belfast (2012); I’m Lost without Your Rhythm, Modern Art Oxford, Moving In, Five Films, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2010); Tiny Movements, ACCA, Melbourne, I’m Lost without Your Rhythm, Camden Art Centre (2009); Taking Turns, Kemper Museum, Kansas City; This Is How We Walk on the Moon, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2008); Forever Changes, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Keep on Doing, DCA, Dundee (2007) and Magical World, PS. 1, New York (2006). She has participated in significant group exhibitions internationally, including 7th Anyang Public Art Project Zone 7 Your Imaginary Space, South Korea, World Classroom, Contemporary Art through School Subjects, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (both 2023); Controra Ep. V, curated by Like A Little Disaster, Palazzo San Giuseppe, Italy; Canakkale Biennial, Turkey (all 2022); Seoul Mediacity Biennale, South Korea (2021); MOMENTUM 10, 10th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway, (2019); It’s Time To Dance Now, Centre Pompidou, Paris, (2010); 4th Auckland Triennial, 2010; Documenta 12, Kassel, (2007); Singapore Biennale, (2006); 9th Istanbul Biennial, (2005); 1st Moscow Biennale, (2005); and 50th Venice Biennale (2003). From 1998 until 2010 Johanna also ran the Make it Happen record label, publishing music and arranging live performances.
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