“The camera is Julia Sjölin's eye and the canvas her body. Over time, the work opens up and the flat surfaces – the canvas – the screen – become landscapes where the sections, with Sjölin herself as a kind of centre, alternate between observing and being observed. When the lens stubbornly follows the figures in frame, she simultaneously allows herself to be exposed in the painting. In a single action – the shift of medium – Sjölin points to the complexity of existing as both object and subject. There is a method recurring in her work; to cut and to crop. The large paintings on the floor will be slit into smaller sections. The film medium is treated in a similar way where various clips are joined together in the same frame, thereby reinforcing the sensation that we are looking at something cropped. In an extension, if the canvas is a body and the camera an eye, we have here something bleeding.”
– Excerpt from Joline Uvman’s text in Cygnet, exhibition catalogue
Julia Sjölin (b. 1992, Skellefteå), is a visual artist living and working in Berlin and Stockholm.
She graduated with an MFA from Malmö Art Academy in 2020 and a BFA from Umeå Academy of Fine Art 2018. Her work has recently been shown at Arcade and Sorigrim, Seoul (2025); Tabakwaren and Großer Wasserspeicher, Berlin (2025); in her solo exhibition Cygnet at Konstakademien, Stockholm (2024); N/A Gallery and Shower, Seoul (2023) and Jennifee-See Alternate, Copenhagen (2023). Her texts have been published in Re:visions Journal, Filmögon and Aber Press.
contact: juliasjoelin@gmail.com