Sofia Vusir Jansson

For me, folk art is friendly and permissive. I love the slightly skewed, the unexpected, the courageous. That there is so much emotion in the creation process, and that the hand is really allowed to leave its mark.

 Sofia Vusir Jansson works broadly with commissions in photography, scenography, interior design and writing. Her creations take off in an imaginary world, with the objective that they should always be perceived as organic and real.

Since the imagination always take over in my creations, everyone sees different flowers from reality in my works. It's nice that the viewer is allowed to interpret freely. It would be a dream project to create my very own flora, just like Josef Frank did in his time.

The inspiration from folk art, folk tradition, handicrafts and historical crafts is clearly visible in Sofia's work. It also reflects her interest in women born around the turn of the last century.

“Selma Lagerlöf, Elin Wägner, Himla af Klint, Tove Jansson, Ester Blenda Nordström, and Estrid Ericson. The stories about them. Their work, thoughts and how they lived. That is usually what attracts me, their way of facing their own time. It's an interest combined with a love of folk art, which for me is friendly and appealing. I love the slightly skewed, the unexpected, the courageous. That there is so much emotion in the creation and that the hand is really allowed to leave its mark.”

“History in general is like a huge treasure chest to dive into. I can become almost obsessed with learning about how people thought over time. What drives me is to turn these thoughts into my own and bring them into the present. For me it's incredibly important to find my own expression, I'm not interested in depicting reality directly, especially when I create my paper flowers. To make them exact representations of reality would be completely uninteresting.”

The paper flowers have become something of a trademark for Sofia Vusir Jansson, and they are also important on a personal level.

“My father died just a few weeks after the first flower I created for Svenskt Tenn, Vinterljus (Winter Light), was realised. Dad had been so involved in the whole process in every possible way. He was my sounding board, and he was there, hand folding all the flowers with me, at home, at my kitchen table. Taking on the task of creating Vinterljus for Christmas 2021 became a healing process in my grief. I spent 132 days at the same table, in the same place, making all the thousands of flowers in nine separate stages. I remember that it was quiet around me as my hands did their work. And somewhere there I understood that my hands still worked to create, a hope to find a new path, where so much had changed.”