Between These Folded Walls, Utopia
van
09.02.2025
t/m
18.05.2025
09.02.2025
18.05.2025
If you had to leave everything behind and start over somewhere new, what would you take with you? How would you shape your life? Who would you become? And if life as you know it fell apart, if forced by war or catastrophe to leave home, would you still dare to dream of a more beautiful world? The photo series and international travelling exhibition Between These Folded Walls, Utopia by Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer features young women, aged 17 to 24, who have been uprooted and displaced for various reasons. Set in surreal, theatrical environments, these stunning portraits are more than just aesthetically beautiful; they feature young women photographed as contemporary goddesses, exploring how identity and self-worth are defined. The layers within each image – both in construction and meaning – highlight the complexity of these themes.
A utopia is not merely an (unreachable) dream world. The Greek term ‘utopia’ also translates to ‘no place.’ Intrigued by this dual meaning, photography duo Sarah Cooper (1974, United States) and Nina Gorfer (1979, Austria) travelled the world, speaking with women in countries like Argentina, Kyrgyzstan and Qatar about migration, displacement, cultural memory, feminism and the formation of identity. With the knowledge acquired, they directed their focus for Between These Folded Walls, Utopia on young women from their local Swedish community. The women portrayed all came to Sweden as refugees or belong to the second generation of immigrants, and are between the ages of 17 and 24. Cooper & Gorfer: “Their age was important to us because in these years you still dream, you believe in the feasibility of the world, your identity is still developing and the emotional baggage you carry is different than at a later stage in life.”
Opening
Between These Folded Walls, Utopia will officially be opened on Sunday, 9 February 2025 at 2:30 p.m. by CODA director Carin Reinders, Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer. To join the opening, please register via the button below.
Between These Folded Walls, Utopia is both aesthetically and conceptually intricate and multi-layered. The photo series also creates an alternative visual language that contrasts with documentary-style representations of refugees. Acknowledging the challenges to identity that result from the process, Cooper & Gorfer pose the question of wat innate strength or imagination is needed to overcome the splintering effect and restore a sense of self that incorporates a new and strange reality. Through hand-crafted painted gardens, lush floral arrangements and hidden sanctuaries, Between These Folded Walls, Utopia is also a tribute to the untamed beauty of nature and its ability to influence our traditions and our identity; a recurring theme in all of Cooper & Gorfer’s work.
For Between Between These Folded Walls, Utopia all women photographed were asked to bring a garment, object or piece of jewellery connected to their identity, culture or that has been in the family for several generations. For those forced to move abruptly, it was often no more than a pocket-sized item: a key from Damascus, a grandmother’s scarf, a bracelet or a ring. The portraits, at first glance ethereal and dreamlike, are made with special attention to clothing and jewellery, ensuring their cultural significance does not go unnoticed.
Cooper & Gorfer: “In many cultures, textile art and clothing production are traditionally the domain of women, intricately tied to heritage, identity and family. In these portraits, the jewellery and clothing in particular are not only an expression of a personal story and your own identity, but they also convey collective memories; the fabric of the tribe to which you belong. Just as these garments are crafted from different textiles, these women embody layers of time and experience. And just as a utopia is a construct of human imagination – a vision or idea – these women, too, are built and composed of many layers. Because of the lack of personal items, we decided to create a collection that is neither their own nor someone else’s but consists of items from the society they come into. We for example photographed the collection of the V&A London, and the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, as well as borrowed items from young Swedish designers. The women are wearing a combination of the above, with some of the personal items they brought, mostly the smaller things such as a key, a scarf or a bracelet.”
Second exhibition by Cooper and Gorfer at CODA Museum
CODA is pleased to welcome Cooper & Gorfer back after nearly a decade, when their work was featured within The Weather Diaries, a series of poetic photographs and spatial installations by ten artists and designers from Northern Europe, on view from November 2015 to February 2016. For this series, Cooper & Gorfer visited the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland to investigate the meaning and influence of weather and the natural environment on identity, tradition and creativity. They discovered that the elements and natural landscapes shape behaviour and identity; that the unruly natural conditions of these places serve to promote creative courage and inventiveness. Their impressions from this journey were captured in staged photographs, layered with colour, texture and symbolism. The result is a photo series that demonstrates nature’s immense power: relentless yet magnificent as it dictates people’s lives and divides the region into small, tightly knit communities. Despite the cultural diversity of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland, a shared commitment emerges, almost paradoxically, to preserving unique national identities. Between These Folded Walls, Utopia is a fitting sequel, both thematically and conceptually, to The Weather Diaries, seamlessly aligning with CODA’s focus on art on paper and jewellery through exhibitions and acquisitions.
Cooper & Gorfer
Sarah Cooper (1974, United States) and Nina Gorfer (1979, Austria) have been collaborating since 2006 on various projects and exhibitions shown in numerous museums across Europe and the United States. Their work is part of museum and private collections worldwide. Between These Folded Walls, Utopia was organised and first exhibited by Johan Vikner, director of Exhibitions at Fotografiska, which curates photography exhibitions in Stockholm, New York, Berlin, Shanghai, Oslo, and Tallinn. Cooper & Gorfer are Hasselblad ambassadors, based in Sweden.
A richly illustrated book accompanies the exhibition and is available at the CODA Winkel.
Jana’s family is from Palestine. Due to escalating violence, her family relocated to Lebanon before she was born. For many years, Jana lived without a passport, which severely restricted her travel opportunities and denied her the right to education; a situation she describes as ‘living in a constant fog, never having the opportunity to truly be part of society. Today, Jana has a Swedish passport and considers Sweden her home; a place where she feels welcome and accepted. When Cooper and Gorfer asked her about the place closest to her heart and where she truly belongs, she did not mention Sweden. Jana described Nazareth, her family’s place of origin. Though she has never visited Nazareth, without a passport at the time, she shared cherished family stories about their home with lemon trees in the garden.
In Eritrea, tens of thousands of young people are compelled to fulfil a lifelong military service. Conscripts often work 72-hour weeks under gruelling conditions, with insufficient food and minimal pay. Like many before her, Yohana was forced to leave her life and family behind to escape this fate. Her only hope for a future lay in another country. Yohana arrived in Sweden in 2015, but she remains haunted by the risk of persecution and therefore chooses not to share overly personal details. To secure her own life, she was forced to leave behind everyone she loved; a heartbreaking choice and a new future marked by the painful loss of her past.
Maryan, of Somali heritage, grew up in Kenya. At the age of 15, she was married off to a Somali man twice her age. Since child marriages are illegal in Kenya, her mother altered her official age from 15 to 18. Maryan gave birth to two daughters before her husband brought her to Sweden in 2014. Here, she discovered new possibilities, gained control over her life and found a supportive network of women. One day, still unaware that she was pregnant with her third child, Maryan took her two daughters and moved to a women’s shelter. She divorced the man she had never chosen for herself and for the first time in her life, she moved into her own apartment; a safe place that she could finally call home.
Israa is a Swedish nurse with a Syrian background. In 2015, at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, she received an urgent call for help. Medical aid organisations were searching for Arabic-speaking nurses to assist refugees arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos. Deeply moved by the human suffering she witnessed in Greece and later in the Syrian war zones, Israa founded the NGO Stand with Syria. This organisation not only collects donations but also sends aid containers from Sweden to Syria, overseeing the transport, arrival, and distribution of goods to refugee camps and to Syrian communities in the areas of greatest need. Israa: “We are all people in one place, on one Earth. We live in one world where we share our lives together. Dividing people into groups—us and them—and all this hatred simply has to stop.” Cooper & Gorfer: “We met Israa in 2018 through mutual friends. We were struck by her determination, her warmth, and her unwavering drive to act and to help, regardless of the obstacles and danger. She inspires us to take action and reminds us of what one person can bring to the world—that every individual matters and every life counts.”