Every Square is a Fiction of Order
Corina Wahlin speaks to Mexican-born Berenice Hernández who has some busy months ahead of her. Besides her upcoming duo exhibition at Nord Books & CRUM, curated by our Koshik Zaman, and a major commission in Gothenburg, a work that has kept her busy for the past two and half years, she is soon about to head up north. "I have never worked with ice as a material, but thankfully I’m naive and always think that everything will work out. It is both my weakness and my strength" she tells us on taking on a material in her practice.
C-P: You are currently preparing a duo exhibition alongside Aaron Bergstrand at two locations in Stockholm, CRUM and Nord Books, which will open on November 12, 2026. What can you tell us about the works that will be exhibited in the upcoming show?
B.H: I’m presenting a series of wall-mounted works. I developed them last year, and they were an attempt to incorporate more color into my work and to move more toward painting than sculpture.
For the past two and a half years, I have been creating artwork in the shape of bricks for a public commission for the façade of Park Central in Göteborg, and that has really influenced my practice. But, as always, I have been focusing on brokenness, fragility, and a sense of ruination. That keeps following me wherever I go.
C-P: While your sculptural practice is diverse in the sense that you work with different materials, I could detect among your latest works a commonality in relation to your exploration of form. Upon observing the composition of the individual works and the tension between the different elements within each piece, there is a sense of experimentation with the disorder within the order of the form. Can you walk us through your process and how considerations about form inform the exhibited end result?
B.H: Normally when I prepare a work for an exhibition, I let every mistake and experiment inform my next artwork. I’m looking for the cracks, the feeling of fragility and chaos. I want the viewer to feel the roughness of the pieces, the edges that are sharp and broken. I want to give a lot to process, and not a soft melody but something that stirs you. I never know if I will achieve that, but at least that is what I attempt.
I have always questioned the rules of ceramics, where something broken has lost its value. In that sense, my pieces start from what is already broken. In some of them, you can even see fragments of previous work, other sculptures that have been scrapped and reincorporated into the new work. I see my working process as a continuity, where there is no past, present, or future. Or perhaps it’s the opposite, where past, present, and future come together in one sculpture. It’s adding history to the piece, and celebrating and seeing everything as existing at the same time. Then it is only a matter of how to contain all that.
C-P: In the works that will be on show in the upcoming exhibition, color seems to be a protagonist. In some of the works, we encounter sculptural forms in color that bring to mind the rich, thick dabs of paint that one might observe on some oil paintings. Could you elaborate on how color informs your practice, and how this might have evolved over time?
B.H: Color has been something I have been contemplating, and in some periods I have been fighting it. I thought it would distract from the sculptural forms. I wanted my sculpture to have a ghostly, ephemeral presence, and color would inhibit that. But I was also questioning it as a part of who I am. In Mexico, color seeps into everything: strong, vibrant colors. Then, when I moved to Sweden, I went through some kind of struggle where color became almost an adversary. This was because here it became part of a stereotype, a Disneyfied version of Mexico. Here, when people put the words artist and Mexico together, they invariably end up with an image of Frida Kahlo in their minds. I didn’t want to play up to the expectations of that image. I chose to fight against it. I wanted to find my own way as an artist, to discover for myself what I was really about.
As an immigrant, there are some rules or expectations that cannot be articulated, that float around like soap bubbles in the air, about how one should be. It could just be in my imagination or not, I can never know for certain, but the fact is that I did not want to be called the colorful Mexican artist. I’m an artist; that is it. It was important for myself to observe and question my decisions. So, when I created these artworks, I was looking forward to experimenting more with paint and embracing color, to use it on my own terms. And then I really understood something: I can do whatever I want as long as I am satisfied with the decision. Whatever the viewer thinks about it is out of my control. It seems obvious now, but it took a long time for me to come to that point.
C-P: I am curious about what sources or references you draw inspiration from in your practice. Do you look to other artists’ work, past or present, as inspiration or a reference point in any way?
B.H: Yes, constantly. But the inspiration I’m looking for is how they see life, how one moves through life. I admire the artists’ bravery and commitment, especially when I lose a little bit of steam. It’s great to be reminded that art is important, that we need it to make life more bearable, and that it’s worth making the effort to keep a practice alive.
Lately, I’ve been looking at artists who moved out of cities, like Agnes Martin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Derek Jarman. For my artwork, I get more inspiration from architecture, self-built architecture, ruins, and strata. And of course, there are some artists whose work I really admire, like Francis Bacon, Do Ho Suh, Doris Salcedo, Heidi Bucher, Anselm Kiefer, and the list could go on.
C-P: I also know that you recently relocated to the countryside. How is your new studio situation coming along?
B.H: Slowly. This is the second time I’m starting a studio from scratch, and even though I know it takes time, sometimes I get desperate. I have been working, developing new experiments and tests, among sawdust, half-made tables, piles of wood, and uninstalled kilns, because, honestly, I do not have unlimited energy to unpack, arrange, build, and keep producing work. It will have to take the time it takes.
I’m starting to see how this has also informed my work. I have worked in different spaces during the past years, and I’m still amazed at how big the influence of those spaces is on my practice. Some of them have pushed me to make larger works, others smaller ones, and others to incorporate other materials and expressions.
This time I have moved my home and studio out to the country. Before, I lived and worked in Leksand. Then I moved to Örebro, but kept the studio in Leksand. Basically, I was living on trains between my apartment and the studio. I tried looking for a studio in Örebro, but the rents were far too high for what I needed. That’s what made me consider the countryside. First, I feared that I would be isolated. But I shouldn’t have worried. I still travel constantly to Stockholm and Gothenburg, so I have not felt isolated for a single second. This move has also opened the possibility to pursue a long dream of mine of having a residency at my space, to keep exploring the collaborative side of my practice.
C-P: As you will be exhibiting in the gem of a bookstore that Nord Books has come to be in Stockholm, I would love to know which book you are currently reading.
B.H: Turns out it’s not only my work and process that is fragmentary; it’s also the way I read. Currently, I have three books I’m jumping between. The first is The Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI by Carissa Véliz. I started reading it because it’s impossible to avoid the AI discussion: AI going out of control, AI stealing artists’ artwork, and so on. AI has become such a loud noise in our lives. Then, at the end of April, an opportunity came up to create an artwork for the Stockholm Craft Week conference. I knew immediately that I wanted to make an oracle using technology. The title of the book says it all.
Second, I’m reading Modern Nature by Derek Jarman. The move to the countryside brought with it an explosion of seeds in the fertile soil that is my mind. I went from having a couple of plants on the windowsill in my apartment to growing my own food, planting flowers, cutting the grass, and having not only clay but also soil under my nails.
Third, back in 2018, I came across the podcast Hablemos Escritoras, which showcases female writers from Latin America. I have a rule for myself that I will always have a book going by a Latin American writer, no matter what else I’m reading. It’s an unlimited source of inspiration. At the moment, I’m reading the short stories in De los potrillos nacen ríos by Sofía de la Vega.
C-P: Lastly, what else might be coming up for you on the horizon?
B.H: Uncertainty is my best friend, or at least that’s what I repeat as a mantra. But in the near future, I’m going north to Jukkasjärvi to create a hall in ice for the Icehotel. This is a collaboration with artist Anna Sofia Mååg, who has a lot of experience working with ice. I am very grateful to team up with her.
I have never worked with ice as a material, but thankfully I’m naive and always think that everything will work out. It is both my weakness and my strength.
Then next year I have a couple of exhibitions, and I will host my first resident, the ceramic artist Nicole Seisler from the USA. We have started a collaboration together where we will explore the residues from our studios. And then, of course, there will be the opening of my public commission for Park Central. I will finally get to see what I have been working on for the past two and a half years.
All images courtesy of the artist.
For more info on Berenice Hernández, please visit: https://hernandezberenice.com/