Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art #13

by: Camila Hidalgo Hernandez

The first thing I see when I enter is a fence — half open, with flowers inside and sand below. Anxiety. Confinement. War. Violence. Surviving Fascism?

The exhibition A Hand That Is All Our Hands Combined, curated by Christina at Röda Sten Konsthall, offers a compelling exploration of trauma, resilience, and collective memory across contemporary art practices. The Biennial assembles works that confront violence, captivity, and systemic inequities, while also emphasizing life, growth, and human connection. It navigates the tension between oppression and survival, guiding the viewer through a spectrum of emotional and political experiences.

Röda Sten Konsthall, Göteborg. Entrance to the museum. Exhibition “A Hand That Is All Our Hands Combined.” Own photo.


Helena Uambembe’s I Saw You When You Watched Me Die immediately sets the tone. Sand, wire, plastic flowers. Standing there reminds me of war, but also of life that keeps growing in the sand. The flowers continue to grow even when they shouldn’t. Even in dryness and darkness, there’s a sense that escape is possible, yet even outside the fence, freedom feels incomplete. Uambembe’s minimal materials give weight to both fragility and resilience, creating a space where physical and symbolic barriers coexist.

Helena Uambembe, I Saw You When You Watched Me Die, 2025. Installation with sand, fence, plastic flowers, 15 × 8 m. Own photograph.

Then I’m met by Rosalind Nashashibi’s Swans and Pots (2024). Love, community, glimpses of tenderness and belonging — and yet, tension: food. Survival. As I move deeper into the room, I can’t help but see Gaza’s children in that struggle: hungry, empty pots, fear, rage, despair. From the first painting to the second, emotions shift rapidly, from tenderness to anger to sorrow, like a cold, dark moment made palpably real. Maybe the swans are children too, or a reflection of all the vulnerable, overlooked bodies in the world. Nashashibi shows how human and animal instincts blur, and how survival exposes the fragility of care and connection.

Then I keep moving until I’m caught by The Indifferent Man (2024). It feels like a tarot card — something almost theatrical, like pulling the joker and smiling out of sadness because you know it’s a cruel joke. My first impression is discomfort: sadness, anger, and a sense that he is untouchable — a symbol of indifference, colonization, and systemic neglect. His clothes evoke what I connect to Christopher Columbus, and he moves among hungry swans and empty pots, dancing without care. The swans cry; life persists around him. It’s a painful reflection on modern indifference — how historical and ongoing systems of oppression, colonization, and capitalism allow suffering to continue while others remain unmoved. Nashashibi captures this moral and emotional dissonance with stark clarity, reminding us that indifference itself is a form of violence.

Rosalind Nashashibi, The Indifferent Man, 2024. Oil and charcoal on linen, 130 × 150 cm | 51⅛ × 59 in. Own photograph.

Upstairs, on the second floor, Haanni Kammaly’s sculptures ALI BEN MOHAMMED (2024–2025) and MUSSARD YAHIA (2022) demand quiet attention. They remind me of letters — large, silent forms trying to speak, yet unable to fully articulate what they hold. The metal figures are fragile, almost spectral, barely noticeable as you enter the room. They appear ungrounded, as if they could collapse at any moment, yet they carry their own weight. Stripped of depth and body, only skeletons remain — and still, they insist on occupying space. There’s a quiet grief here, a subtle tension between visibility and erasure, between presence and fragility.

As I approach the wall text, the reference becomes clear: Sweden’s history of racial biology, and the way migrants or “others” — those who are not white — have been described and dehumanized by white supremacist frameworks. The depth of the individual disappears through language that defines them only by surface, reducing them to outlines, to shells. Violence enacted through description — through words that erase rather than reveal.

The moving image and sound installation by Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Dalena Tran, and Andrew Yong Hoon Lee — There’s Enough Light to Drown In but Never Enough to Enter the Bones (2025) — immerses the viewer in a claustrophobic, subterranean space. You can see light outside, but you remain locked in. Is it enough? Sunlight barely filters through. The description mentions an underground space for those who think differently — and it feels painfully true. Captivity, surveillance, isolation: it’s all present, yet small flashes of hope still manage to break through.

I feel trapped, yet I imagine standing on a mountain, surrounded by trees, breathing freely — sensing the vastness of life that exists beyond confinement. Even in absence, the installation vibrates with tension and quiet resistance, making the audience acutely aware of the fragile boundaries between freedom and captivity. The recurring images of clouds suggest that hope still exists somewhere beyond — that through survival and endurance, freedom might one day be possible.

Watching the audience becomes part of the experience. They stand completely still, silent, mesmerized — almost as if the installation has entered their bodies. For a moment, it feels as though we are all underground together, enclosed in the same air, breathing the same weight of history.

Finally, Raven Chacon’s Silent Choir greets me with a black wall and silence, on the top floor of the museum. At this point, I don’t know what to expect anymore. The space is dark, heavy, almost ungraspable. Before entering, I imagined something lighter — when I read the title, I thought of a choir as a symbol of hope or community. But perhaps this too is about hope and community, only in another form. Maybe the word “choir” here means a collective experience of silence — a shared endurance rather than a harmony of voices.

There’s someone coughing in the distance, constantly. Are we tired? Or are we in a space where it’s difficult to breathe? The narrow corridor pulls me in, and as I step into the dimly lit room, I realize I’m alone. Every sound belongs to the installation — the faint helicopters, the uneasy rustling of nature. Everything feels real, dense, like the air itself is vibrating.

I feel both large and small, alone but accompanied by sound. Anxiety pulses through every step. Silence, sound, confinement, and expansiveness coexist. The work traps you physically and emotionally, making you hyper-aware of your own breathing. Even without visible imagery, the soundscape cuts sharply — visceral, cognitive, impossible to ignore. It feels as if something enormous is following me, as if I’m hiding from something I cannot see.

Silent Choir becomes a meditation on fear, resistance, and survival. The silence is not absence; it’s presence — a force that hums through your body, reminding you what it means to exist inside both vulnerability and resilience.

Christina’s curation links these works into a journey: from anxiety and confinement to tenderness, reflection, and resilience. The exhibition encourages both emotional engagement and intellectual reflection. Each work builds on the previous one, creating a dialogue between trauma, survival, and systemic indifference. The Biennial demonstrates how contemporary art can operate as both witness and critique, fostering empathy while challenging viewers to confront historical and ongoing injustices.

What stayed with me most was the reminder that art and culture are vital: for visibility, empathy, and understanding. Exhibitions like this are necessary to educate, provoke, and connect us with stories and experiences outside our own. The audience is diverse — different ages, backgrounds — and those who stay to read each wall text seem deeply affected. I found myself drawn most strongly to works addressing war, captivity, and trauma. I did not feel the artists were overly radical; perhaps the intention was not to shout the struggle, but simply to say: Here we are. Existing. Feeling. Surviving. Resisting.

A Hand That Is All Our Hands Combined is one of the most important exhibitions I’ve attended this year. It blends rigorous curation, interdisciplinary practices, and emotional intensity, producing a space where personal reflection and social critique intersect.

The Biennial reminds us that art is a space for critical engagement, empathy, and reflection. It confirms the necessity of culture in making visible the stories, struggles, and hopes that shape our world.