This book is a survey of Sofia Hultén’s practice between 2001 and 2007. Born in Stockholm in 1972, Sofia Hultén moved to Birmingham as a child. Although she trained as a sculptor, graduating from Sheffield Hallam University in 1995, the artist now works with video, photography and objects.

Hultén’s video works document the artist undertaking a series of seemingly futile or absurd tasks such as repeatedly destroying and repairing objects, finding hiding places within an office and disguising herself amongst street furniture. Her artworks involve a preoccupation with the relationship between human beings and the object world.

Hultén’s work is at once rigorously produced and modestly homemade – a combination of meticulousness and makeshift ingenuity. It is engaging through its familiarity and suspense. Her characters are purposeful in their waiting and the artist invites us to wait with them, filling in time with a kind of activity that inspires imaginative thought. Instead of narrative closures, we enjoy the open endings.

English and German text.