Charlotte Johannesson
Save as art?

5 November 2023 – 11 February 2024

Installation view, Charlotte Johannesson, No Future, 1977 ; New Wave, 1977. Photo : Guillaume Python

Charlotte Johannesson (b. 1943) lives and works in Skanör, Sweden. Her work explores the formal and conceptual connections between the craft technology of the loom and the technology of computer programming. Trained as a weaver, Johannesson began creating tapestries as art in the 1970s counter-cultural environment of Malmö. In 1981, she established the Digital Theatre, an experimental image production studio, with her partner, Sture Johannesson.

The exhibition at Friart brings together textiles, digital graphics, plotter prints, paintings and lace experiments created over the past fifty years: a constellation of motifs that invoke her engagement with satire of the State from hippy, to punk and cyberculture, to a more cosmic imaginary. The radical nature of her work positions her as a forerunner of today’s post-feminist digital art.

Charlotte Johannesson image — Exhibition view, Charlotte Johannesson, *Save as art?*, 2023, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg. Photo : Guillaume Python

Exhibition view, Charlotte Johannesson, Save as art?, 2023, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg. Photo : Guillaume Python

Installation view, Charlotte Johannesson, No Future, 1977 ; New Wave, 1977. Photo : Guillaume Python

Exhibition view, Charlotte Johannesson, Save as art?, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python.

Exhibition view, Charlotte Johannesson, Save as art?, 2023, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg. Photo : Guillaume Python

Installation view, Charlotte Johannesson, Black Hole (Purple Blue), 1983 ; Untitled (Purple), 1983, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python.