Bio
Paula Tove Maria Alderin (b. 1971) lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden, holding a Postmaster’s in Fine Arts from the Royal Institute of Art inStockholm (2023) and a Master’s in Fine Arts from the Royal Danish Academy inCopenhagen (2000).
Her practice often involves performative actions, inan act that seeks to move from what is seen to what is happening, to what is dissolving brutally and quietly. Through various gestures and iterations—detonations, blowing, molding, liquefying, surrendering herself —she poses questions about the nature of existence, explores liminal spaces and the lack of physicality. In an interplay between the intelligible and the obscure, the wild and the desolate, the remnants and the lamented.
“What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event” (Harald Rosenberg, The American Action Painters, ARTnews, 1952).
Her actions take form in formation, through personally or historically charged materials - informed by the materiality itself as a physical substance or as containers of ideas and notions, open in intention, becoming itself a thing and not are reprentation of a thing. She explores how acts and gestures can give the intangible tangible form, while she awaits the unseen and the unforeseen to materialize—forging new imaginaries and landscapes to unfold.
Through the lenses of Belief, Consciousness, and Memory, her practice delves into the ambiguity of the existing and the insisting, proximity and distance. Drawing from her own experiences of altered states of consciousness and realities beyond the apparent, the work plays with boundaries of space and concept through philosophy, science, reality, and saga.
“What remains after an act has ended? What are the obligations of a witness to an act that is over? These questions are thoroughly theatrical and performative, but they are also intimate and ethical” (Peggy Phelan, Lessons in Blindness, PMLA, 2004).
She uses her canvas as an arena on which to act — and subjects herself to the act of waiting, to begin to see what appears in the quiet of the space. Her work is shown as material and non-material explorations, encompassing installation, sculpture, painting, collage, light work, and text.
PaulaTove Maria Alderin (b. 1971) resides and works in Stockholm, Sweden. She has a Postmaster of Fine Art from The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm(2023) and a Master of Fine Art from the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen (2000). Working with painting, sculpture, installation, light works and text.
Themes and imagery central to Paula Tove Maria Alderin practice are Other realms, Other modalities of reality and Liminal spaces, seen through the narratives of Consciousness, Constructs of beliefs, and Metaphysics. In her artistry she explores transitions, shifts and resistance, through personally or historically charged materials, often informed by the materiality itself, both as a physical material or a container of ideas, and notions. Alderin draws attention from her own experiences of altered states of consciousness, and other realities than the apparent Intrigued by the idea of deconstructing experienced reality and disclosing, places and events, phantasms, incomprehensible to the human mind. But the non-ordinary places, that have no place in the Grand story, has no form, nor exist on no map.
“What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but anevent” (Harald Rosenberg. “The American Action Painters”, ARTnews, 1952)
Her work often takes a point of departure in performative actions, using her own body data or gestures. In an act that seeks itself from what is seen, to what is notseen, to what happens. Her horizontal working denies the gaze controlling the reality. Her actions are form in formation, free from intentionality, to become itself a thing, and not a representation of a thing. She uses her canvas as an arena on which to act. Subjects herself to the act of waiting, to begin to see what makes us not usually see such a vital figure. It may seem abstract, but each gesture draws a scenario. A place for being and becoming, a place to take risks. Portrays, the consequences of not seeing. Her work invites us to imagine. Regardless of what medium PaulaTove Maria Alderin employs, she brings together timeless, existential themes into tangible form.
Recent and ongoing works Delight in Peril, , solo installation, Uppsala Cathedral, supported by The Swedish Arts Grant scommittee (2021)Transcendental Transmissions, permanent light work in the city center of Stockholm, commissioned by Stockholm stad / Stockholm konst(2025)Forgetfulness Worth Rememberingvideowork/scenery, at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm (2017, 18) Boundless boundaries, / The Miraculous videowork/scenery, at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm (2017, 18)Scientificresearch through an artist’s lens’,artist program and xhibition, Coalescence; Sci Life lab, RoyalInstitute of Art in Stockholm (2023)
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“[…].The French philosopher Jacques Derrida used khôra to name a radical otherness that gives place to being. Something that appears when an artwork push meaning to its limits, as a place of deconstruction. For Julia Kristeva it is a psychoanalytical term hinting at the realms of the drives, pre-symbolic yet framed by the human psyche. In Greek antiquity Khôra was the vast and untamed area beyond the city walls, unregulated and lawless: wild, dangerous but also open-ended. At Studio Giardini Alderin and Gudrunsdotter invited visitors into their Khôra. Using time, clay, seed, dust, and metal, they challenged pre-defined imaginations. […]. When Paula Tove Maria Alderin and Katarina Elvira Gudrunsdotter intersect their art works through the concept of Khôra they explore words, space, and materiality. For Gudrunsdotter the concept holds a promise of freedom, a place released from oppression or any outside agendas. For Alderin it is a liberating act, inferno like in its force, releasing the restraints of the human world."
- Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, Delight in Peril, Studio Giardini, Venice, 2024