Clare Strand

Bugs and Metamorphosis: Glitching Photography . Hasslebald Center Curatred by Louise Wolthers, Hasselblad Foundation and Nina Mangalanayagam. 

28th March, Skogen, 19:00 - 22.00  A series of stories involving the Glitch will be performed by Clare Strand. Along with artist presentations by Sheung Yiu and Olle Essvik.

Bugs & Metamorphosis: Glitching Photography is an exhibition that explores “bugs” in two intriguing ways: both as technical glitches and as tiny creatures, insects. By combining these two perspectives, the exhibition creates a visual experience that’s playful, critical, and thought-provoking. From digital mishaps to insect-inspired art, the works challenge our understanding of photography and technology.

With more than 15 artworks, the exhibition reveals how glitches can disrupt and question systems of knowledge, classification, and control. Bugs appear both as real creatures—moths, flies, bees, and other insects—and as technical malfunctions with themes like swarming, webbing, symbiosis, and extinction. The exhibition highlights the ecologies between human-made and natural forces.

Bugs & Metamorphosis provides critical insights into contemporary networked and machine-based photography. Bugs emerge through hybridity, camouflage, mimicry, and transformation. Many of the artworks are grounded in decolonial, feminist, queer, and ecological practices, embracing glitching to highlight ambiguity, unruliness, and vulnerability. Other works delve into glitches within archiving, mapping, and visualization processes. Through a mix of technologies—both analogue and digital, screen-based and installation, AI/GAN, and “low-tech”—the exhibition shows how glitches can open new ways of seeing and understanding the world.

Several of the works have been created specifically for this exhibition, and many of the artists are shown in Sweden for the first time. During the exhibition, photography and videoworks by Rashaad Newsome and Amalie Smith are shown at Gothenburg Museum of Art, and at Gothenburg Museum of Natural History works by Joana Moll, Mónica Alcázar-Duarte and Kristina Lenz and Alex Klug are on display.

Participating artists:
Mónica Alcázar-Duarte (ME), Taysir Batniji (PS/FR), Jake Elwes (UK), Olle Essvik (SE), Henrik Håkansson (SE), Kristina Lenz och Alex Simon Klug (DE), Nina Mangalanayagam (SE), Joana Moll (ES), Rashaad Newsome (US), Josèfa Ntjam (FR), Amalie Smith (DK), Clare Strand (UK), Hope Strickland (UK), Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert & Alexa Achilleos (CY), Sheung Yiu (HK/FI).

Curators:
Louise Wolthers, Hasselblad Foundation and Nina Mangalanayagam, HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg

An extended public program including performances and film screenings will take place during the exhibition period. Details to follow.

Parts of the exhibition will travel to Kunsthal Aarhus in Denmark, June – August 2025.

In connection with the exhibition, the book Bugs & Metamorphosis: Field Guide to Glitching Photography will be published by Art & Theory. The book is designed as a field guide and includes an introduction by Nina Mangalanayagam and Louise Wolthers, as well as essays by Cathryn Klasto, Joanna Zylinska, Majken Overgaard, Peter Nielsen, Peter Ole Pedersen, Tintin Wulia.