Cecilia Bjartmar Hylta (1992) often takes themes like infrastructure and urban planning as points of departure for new work. She is interested in how we move though the outside space, in the demands placed on us by structures, and in the reactions these evoke. In her work she tries to mimic public situations in order to visualize their underlying, often invisible, forms and ideas.
Untitled (2023), the work Bjartmar Hylta is showing at Prospects in the hallway leading to the Distribution Centre, was prompted by her observations on traffic posts. In her own words: “I was imagining a long row of silent rooms, like an X-ray of an inverted street, the whole thing seemed tense and charged. Physically so close, perhaps not even a centimetre apart from each other, saturated activity in all directions, and dark silence, like a charged battery.” On a platform, the traffic posts have been placed upside down in the raised flooring in order to emphasize their hollow interior. The audience is allowed to step onto the platform to experience the work. For the outside sculpture Van Nellefabriek (2023), the artist collected dust from the Distribution Centre which she compressed to form a miniature version of the building. In both sculptures, Bjartmar Hylta is thus inverting content and form.
Text: Esther Darley
Translation from Dutch to English: Marie Louise Schoondergang