Swedish contemporary artist Arvida Byström subverts feminine aesthetics, dealing with subject matter such as censorship, disobedient bodies and the sexualisation of women online
This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine:
“As a teenager, I was physically close to nature but my life felt very digital. Now I only work digitally because I’ve done it for so long, but I don’t spend time in that space when I’m not working. I try to be in nature with my dog, go to a lake to clear my mind. My favourite is Trehörningen in Hanveden, south of Stockholm. It’s inside a nature reserve, tiny and still, with lots of tadpoles. These lakes have often featured in Swedish art. There’s a classic image by the famous children’s illustrator John Bauer from over a century ago of a girl sitting by a lake. During the Covid-19 pandemic, I took photos inspired by it, self-portraits where Nordic folklore creatures met digital themes. I was thinking about the influencer as a kind of fairy. She’s real but not real, based in reality but mythical – her image gets warped or it’s hard to understand. A lot of American artists’ work right now is rooted in Americana aesthetics – I’m drawn to the northern European kind. I want to reinvent what we’re longing for.”
Inspired by Tumblr, the Swedish contemporary artist Arvida Byström picked up a digital camera in her teens, drawing on selfie culture to subvert feminine aesthetics. After moving to London in 2012, and later LA, she became known for dealing with subject matter such as censorship, disobedient bodies and the sexualisation of women online. Last year, for her project In the Clouds, she created artificial nudes of herself and sold them in an interactive digital piece that also allowed users to converse with a bot trained on her interviews. “In this sexual chatting there was so much fantasy. It doesn’t matter if it’s ‘real’, men want a place to talk about their emotions.” Her forthcoming art film, PET, for Telematic gallery in San Francisco, continues this exploration of AI as pet, therapist and relationship counsellor. “To know there is not a human judging you is powerful,” she says.
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale now.
