Photo of Caroline Elgh

Caroline Elgh

PhD student

Caroline Elgh’s work lay at the intersection of contemporary art, visual culture, science fiction, feminist posthumanities and environmental humanities.

Contemporary art, science fiction and environmental humanities – towards new ways of imagining the world.

With background in cultural studies and as art curator my academic work is focused on contemporary artistic practices and its relation to the ongoing environmental and climate crisis. I examine in what ways art and other cultural expressions may generate new ecological imaginaries around humans’ way of being and living with and in relation to nature where the coastline – as contact zone between forest and water – is the point of departure. My foundation in transdisciplinary gender studies opens for a mix of methods and materials where science fiction, both as cultural genre and feminist methodology, form tools for exploring art’s capability to create new worlds where hierarchies are dismantled and humans are part of nature, instead of separated from it.

I have earlier curated several exhibitions and publications at the intersection of art, ecology and technology such as Cosmological Arrows. Journeys through inner and outer space at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm. With my experience of exhibition production I am engaged in curatorial and feminist care practices and the exhibition as medium and transmitter of ecological and embodied knowledge, but also art’s predictions and limitations in times of ecological crises. I am performing my own fieldwork at the coastline (at the Swedish west coast) as a way of weaving together theory and practice, where I in close dialogue with biologists’ snorkel and learn to know low-trophic creatures, primarily seaweed. For me, the fieldwork expands my attention to ecological and tangible artistic materials at the same time as it opens up for a curious sharing of knowledge between science, humanities and art.

Since 2020 I am part of LiU Professor Cecilia Åsberg’s transdisciplinary feminist research school The Posthumanities Hub and since recently also Assistant Professor Marietta Radomska’s The Eco- and Bioart Lab. I teach regularly at for example The Curator Program at Stockholm University and participate in talks and panels within various art, museum and research contexts. I am also part of the board of the association Gender in Museums that monitors and generates new knowledge around gender within museum work.


Publications