Åkerlund, Jenny

Swedish, b. 1984

BiographyJenny Åkerlund’s series Selenography II (2010-2011) consists of graphite drawings rendered to look nearly identical to photocopies of pages from textbooks. The handcrafted works are easily misread as mechanical reproductions, and, as a result, play with the degradation of images and reveal ways perception can fluctuate in the course of careful scrutiny. All of the original source material in the works is taken from publications containing pictures of the moon that were photographed before the first lunar landing in 1969. The once cutting-edge imagery has now become obsolete, a reminder of how quickly our rapid acquisition of knowledge turns novel discoveries into relics of the past.

Jenny Åkerlund attended Gerlesborg School of Fine Art, Stockholm, Sweden (2004-2007); completed a BFA at Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, Umeå, Sweden (2010); and earned an MFA at the Malmö Art Academy, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden (2010-2012). To aid her artistic process, she studied black holes and cosmic explosions at Stockholm University (2010). Åkerlund has exhibited in Sweden, Germany, and the United States.