Parklife

The international group exhibition Parkliv (Parklife) will inaugurate Marabouparken as a new art centre located in Sundbyberg, within greater Stockholm. The renowned park was created for the recreation of the employees of the chocolate manufacturer Marabou in the 1940-1950s. Since 2005 Marabouparken is also the name of a foundation that has focussed on exhibitions of contemporary art, discussions and art in public space. Marabou's old cocoa laboratory has now been rebuilt to house the activities of the foundation and provides space for a subterranean exhibition gallery, an educational workshop, a permanent exhibition gallery with works by Swedish painter Hilding Linnqvist, a café as well as conference rooms. The new art centre will offer the audience the possibility of experiencing contemporary art and participating in events and art projects in a beautiful and inviting park setting. 

With our inaugural exhibition Parkliv the park context into which Marabouparken's new gallery is literally submerged is reactivated: its special landscape, history, future and its role as private and public space. As indicated by the exhibition title, we have invited artists and writers who take an interest in how we experience the park as nature, culture and physical space. As a public space, the park expresses the human need to cultivate and shape nature according to one's requirements. Cultivation is not only a means for survival - it is also an expression of a social, caring instinct with the potential to transform people, places and relationships. Different aspects of the park space merge into one another and recur in the exhibition on various levels: on a molecular plant level, in nature's and culture's continuous interaction, and in the park's way of creating a public space for meetings and play - a fundamental humanism.