Public Lecture: Ephemeral Ornamentals & Scandi Scales
April 8, 2026
What is lost when the surface becomes suspect and the decorative is perceived as a threat to function, order, and rationality? Is it not then that form begins to speak a new language, in which the tactile, the sensual, and the physical are pushed aside in favor of the pure and the universal?
For whom does this universality actually arise? Which bodies can move freely through the spaces of modernism, interpreting its silence as liberation and its lack of ornamentation as a virtue? And which bodies, on the other hand, experience distance, coldness, discipline, and exclusion?
About Erik Thörnqvist
Erik Thörnqvist grew up in Luleå and earned his Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Royal Institute of Art in 2023. He was subsequently awarded a grant from the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation and the Rubus Arcticus prize in 2024. In 2023, he participated in the SOMA Residency in Mexico City.
Thörnqvist’s work has been exhibited in both solo and group shows at institutions such as SOMA (Mexico City), Bonniers Konsthall (Stockholm), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Lunds Konsthall (Lund), Final Hot Desert (Utah), KIN (Kiruna), and Konstnärshuset (Stockholm). His work was also included in the Luleå BiennialTime on Earth(2020).
His work is represented in public collections such as the Swedish National Public Art Council, the Malmö Art Museum, and the Stockholm School of Economics. Thörnqvist recently completed two public art commissions in Uppsala County and is currently working on a new public sculpture for the Swedish National Public Art Council in Luleå.
Time and place
When: April 8, 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Where: The Auditorium, Beckman College of Design, Agavägen 54
