Anu Põder’s first Swedish solo exhibition opens in Malmö

Anu Põder’s first solo exhibition in Sweden has opened at the Malmö Museum of Contemporary Art, highlighting three decades of work by the Estonian artist. Her legacy collection’s manager, Berit Teeäär, told ERR that Põder stood out for her uniqueness.

The exhibition traces Põder’s creative development, from works exploring bodily experience to pieces addressing consumption and criticism of capitalism. It also presents her drawings in Sweden for the first time. The recently conserved drawings come from the artist’s legacy collection.

Põder, who died in 2013, was already highly regarded in Estonia during her lifetime. Her career began in the 1970s, and she held solo exhibitions in Estonia in the 1980s. Her works were acquired by the Art Museum of Estonia, Tartu Art Museum and an art fund while she was alive.

Teeäär described Põder as an artist who went against the grain, citing her vivid imagination and distinctive use of materials. Among them was pink plastic used in several works in the 1980s. Põder obtained leftover medical material used to make orthoses through her brother, a doctor, and experimented with it in sculpture.

Põder’s international profile gathered pace after a 2017 retrospective at the Art Museum of Estonia. Teeäär said the exhibition’s depth and growing international interest in women artists helped bring wider attention to her work. In 2022, Põder’s works were included in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale, titled Milk of Dreams and curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Her work has been linked to surrealism and pop art, and she was associated with feminism in the 1990s. Teeäär said Põder’s quieter form of expression was less visible at the time than the work of younger feminist artists.

One work that museums often want to exhibit is Tongues, made from soap. Because the original is too fragile to travel from the Art Museum of Estonia’s collection, the museum’s conservator made a replica at the request of Moderna Museet.

The Malmö exhibition is due to travel to Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in spring and to the EMMA art museum in Finland in autumn 2028.