This exhibition explores the spellbinding quality of ever...

Courtesy of Sam TalbotMarch 9, 2026Art & Photography / LightboxArt & Photography / LightboxThis exhibition explores the spellbinding quality of everyday life

Featuring Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger, this group exhibition brings together alchemical works by artists across generations whose practices explore the ongoing power of ancient belief systems

ShareLink copied ✔️March 9, 2026March 9, 2026TextTiarnaSpellbound

Gallery / 14 images

To be spellbound is to be captivated or transfixed by an object, a story, a person or a state of mind. It’s an apt term for the latest exhibition curated by Jennifer Higgie from the collection of the Firestorm Foundation.

Centring around the mysteries that form the apex of our daily lives, the exhibition explores mythic landscapes, bodies and plants, and the ways our beings are tethered to the natural and spiritual worlds. “It’s a very playful show,” Higgie says, “but it’s also serious at a time of the wielding of patriarchal power across the globe; this is a thorn of feminist resistance to those monolithic patriarchal ideas”.

This thread runs through the 50 or so sculptures, paintings and photographs installed across the cosy Stockholm gallery. Some are alchemical images by spiritualist artists Hilma af Klint and Tyra Kleen, whose work gestures toward unseen energies and esoteric systems of belief. Others examine the form of the body through materials like bronze and stoneware, casting limbs and torsos into abstract works by artists including Marisol Escobar and Sabine Mirlesse. Elsewhere, the exhibition includes captivating photography from artists like Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #105, 1982Courtesy of Sam Talbot

“I’m very tired of artworks that are overdetermined in terms of their interpretation,” says Higgie, a sentiment that informs the notable lack of wall text accompanying the works throughout the gallery. Instead, viewers are left to pull their own interpretations from the art, as Higgie intended. Another deliberate choice was the use of navy walls throughout the space, a welcome departure from the sterile white that usually favours gallery interiors. The darker palette means works like Ulla Wiggen’s Iris XXVII Albin – a large iris suspended on the first wall visitors encounter – draw you in all the more.

One of the exhibition’s throughlines is the use of the human form as a site of examination on both a corporeal and spiritual level. Bodies appear fragmented or abstracted, shifting between object and symbol. “Many of these artists are enthralled to the past, they’re very interested in ideas of myth, archetype, ancient magic and ancient powers, spiritual and belief systems,” explains Higgie, “but they take those knowledge systems and look at how they might be applied to the present, and they might help us move forward in the future.”

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Crow and Carnation, 2020Courtesy of Sam Talbot

Elsewhere, mythical landscapes, plants and biological processes recur throughout the exhibition. Roots, branches, stones and bodily traces appear across media, suggestive of the porous boundaries between the human and environment. Nature here acts as a reminder that the spiritual, the biological and the political often bleed into one another. This is evident in Martina Müntzing’s Handelsehorisont, which depicts the devastating force of grief through the painting of two stags and a young child.

“I’m very interested in the history of exclusion and especially of women and non-binary artists and their place in the canon of art history. This really chimes with me,” explains Higgie. It’s a sentiment shared by Firestorm founder Cristina Ljungberg, whose work has long-centred around women’s health and philanthropy. In that sense, Spellbound brings together a collection of artists who, even with their respective success, have long worked with subjects that remain underrepresented within the canon of art history.

Spellbound is running Hudikvallsgatan 6, Stockholm, Sweden until 21 March 2026.

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