the place that holds its breath

Deep in the forests of Halland, the village of Unnaryd has emerged as a prominent cultural hub, with a vibrant art and music scene. In Unnaryd’s heritage park is the Bonadsmuseum, the world’s only museum dedicated to the southern Swedish bonads painting – a unique visual tradition that combines folk storytelling, painting and cultural history. In the narrative folk art of bonads paintings, images are painted on canvas or paper with earth pigments, water and eggs. Historically, these colorful motifs served both as decoration and as educational tools, as they often depicted biblical stories, but with local interpretations and expressions that made them accessible to a population with low literacy. Today, the museum is an active meeting place with courses, exhibitions and program activities that keep the storytelling traditions of bonads painting alive and put the cultural and historical heritage in conversation with contemporary art and craft practitioners.

Valeria Montti Colque (born 1978 in Stockholm) is an artist with roots in Chile. Her work emerges in collage form – where drawing, watercolor, textile, ceramics and recycled materials are intertwined into stories of transformation and belonging. Layer upon layer, each piece bears traces of time and care. In the residency The Place That Holds the Breath, Valeria Montti Colque delwes into a bustling artistic universe of textile painting’s storytelling tradition, where the spiritual is intertwined with the rebellious, playful and poetic. Through new works that take their cue from the museum’s unique collections, she explores how a place can carry a living history, about life and death, through a rich imagery filled with symbolism and visual storytelling. The works will be presented in an exhibition at the Bonadsmuseum that opens on the National Day, June 6, 2026, and runs until the 31st of August.