Arvida Byström

Arvida Byström Instagram – I mainly got really sweet reviews on my show Cut The Cake, so it is a little petty of me to “answer” the bad ones. But I find it pretty interesting that the people criticizing me do so partly on the basis of me not having enough art historical references.
There is something navel-gazing about art historians and art critics who ask artists to reference their field of expertise—art history—and not wanting any new art to be… new? Technically, shouldn’t it be their job to find the bridge through art history?
To be a new artist, especially if you have a feminine and glitzy aesthetic like I do, getting taken seriously is a bit of jumping through hoops, which actually means that in a lot of my earlier shows I’ve done my due diligence and included more obvious references.
The lack of taking female artists who work with their bodies seriously is something Lauren Elkin points out in her book Art Monsters. This is something the critics once again reinforced. One of them also compared my work to Cindy Sherman’s, stating that my work is different on the basis that it doesn’t position itself far away from what it is trying to critique. She writes this in a way where she doesn’t seem to be aware that this is a critique Sherman received for her earlier work.
Even though there are underlying references in my show Cut The Cake, I’ve got to say that I felt the concept and imagery created are so strong that they didn’t need literal references to art history. I also honestly thought I had done enough of the “positioning myself as not a frivolous girl” that I didn’t have to do more of that positioning.
😛 | Posted on 14/Jul/2024 16:18:13