AWARDS

Martina HOOGLAND IVANOW (b. 1973) is an artist working primarily in photography, film, and bookmaking, with a practice centered on the interplay between filtered light, sound, and image. After an early career as an international photographer in New York, Paris, and London, she established her art practice in Stockholm in 2002, where she continues to live and work.

HOOGLAND IVANOW studied at Parsons School of Design in Paris and New York (BFA, 1992–1996), Konstfack in Stockholm (2015-16), and completed a post-master program at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2019–2022).

Her work is characterized by a non-linear and associative structure, often using analog techniques that explore the opacity and transparency of film in experimental ways. These methods challenge conventional ways of seeing and create layered visual experiences that resist straightforward interpretation. Recent works draw on the irrational undercurrents of the present, including emotional responses to climate change and the social and spatial effects of emerging technologies.

Her practice reflects both strong and subtle reactions to social structures, often explored through representations of places, individuals, and subcultures. She sees subcultures as responses to dominant norms, pointing to something lacking in broader society.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Kulturhuset, Stockholm and Hermès Foundation, New York.

Her recent publications are Early Reading (2018) and the most recent Shadow Works, Living the Dream (2025), Livraison Books. She is currently developing a feature length documentary, Second Nature, following individuals seeking communal life in nature.

www.martinahooglandivanow.com

<Artist Statements>

It is a great honor to receive this award. My interest in Japanese culture runs long and deep, from its rich influence in literature, art, bookmaking, photography, and filmmaking. This recognition therefore holds a special place for me.

For me, photography comes out of an ongoing interest in the complexity and contradiction of contemporary life. This runs as a continuous thread through my work, where the process becomes a way of investigating the dual nature of human experience and the relationship between the self and the outside world.

In my work with bookmaking and editing, I often engage with repetition and the potential of abstraction. Certain themes return, such as irrationality, theatricality, and the ways we construct and perform identity, often in relation to the natural world and inter human relationships. The work is layered and interwoven. I see humans as a strange species. We often know what to do, yet remain unable to act. We are at times destructive, but also capable of something extraordinary.

In my relationship with the camera, I have developed methods involving visual displacement and the manipulation of shadows to create a reduced and abstract visual language. Analog photography and the darkroom are central to this process. By pushing the opacity and transparency of the negative, I work with the possibility of absence. I find that a camera often captures more information than the human eye can register, and therefore explores the possibility of showing less.

Martina HOOGLAND IVANOW