The Wish Machine, Slipvillan
The Wish Machine
2025.10.18 - 2025.11.09. Opening October 18th 2 pm
Slipvillan, Mälarvarvsbacken 32, 117 33 Stockholm. https://slipvillan.org
In the autumn of 2025 and the spring of 2026, Slipvillan explores the theme "At the Borderland Between Industrial Ruin and Nature's Recovery. The project is an artistic journey through contaminated landscapes, ecological concerns, and cultural thresholds, supported by the Swedish Arts Council, Region Stockholm, and the City of Stockholm.
Opening on October 18, the exhibition "The Wish Machine" brings together artists Galina Davydtchenko and YIva Westerlund as they examine and give form to the physical and psychological pollution embedded in the local landscape. Through a weave of poetic expression and documentary strategies, their work address themes of loss, memory, and the significance of place, while exposing both the inner and outer consequences of industrial activity. Moving between the personal and the collective, the exhibition spans experiences of growing up in industrial towns where forestry and environmental destruction are deeply rooted, to life in the metropolis where industrial landscape are constantly shifting. "The Wish Machine" thus becomes an inquiry into how people live with, and within, the traces of industry: between ruin and renewal, between wounds and possibilities.
YIva Westerlund, Stockholm, graduated from Malmö Art Academy in 2003. She works with installation and text-based works, and has exhibited at Inseparable Distance, Swedish Pavilion, Gwangju Biennale (2024) and Peace with the Earth, Tensta Konsthall (2025), among others. In the exhibition The Wish Machine at Slipvillan, parts of her installation Spellings are presented, a repetitive exploration of her hometown Husum. Website: ylvawesterlund.blogspot.com
Galina Davydtchenko, Stockholm, graduated from the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1992, Soviet Union, and later took independent courses at Konstfack, 2009-2015. She works primarily in oil painting, but also with printmaking, objects, and film. Place and history are recurring threads throughout Galina's artistic practice. Website: https://galinadavydtchenko.se
