Klara Ström

Obsessed Play and I Play Obsessed II (2026) 

In 2024, I was invited to create a specially commissioned performance for the opening of the exhibition Forgotten Realms at Tjolöholm Castle. Although I was not present on site as a residency artist, I took part in several visits to the castle during the residency period, including excursions, conversations, and lectures exploring thematic framework: Nordic and Celtic folklore. 

I wrote the script and produced the work Obsessed Play and I Play Obsessed, a walk with the audience in which myth and folklore are stirred together, forming a creature that is at once alluring and repelling. Forest and water, fear and pleasure, religion and superstition met in a voice-based performance. I delivered a liturgical narrative with strong connections to Tjolöholm Castle and its surroundings. It became a physical and spiritual journey between castle and forest, a kind of rite of passage between two worlds and temporalities. 

Now I will present a reworked version of Obsessed Play and I Play Obsessed. The script is being rewritten, and new costumes and scenography are created. The creature we encountered at the edge of the forest at Tjolöholm appears differently in the urban environment along the banks of the River Nissan in Halmstad. She has different brow ridges, and the gaze upon her has shifted—she has transformed. 

Creatures from folklore are ever-present in my process. I allow them to cross-pollinate and dissolve, blending with my own inventions. In this reworked version, we might think of the forest being we met at Tjolöholm as having undergone an evolutionary development, now adapted to survive within the urban landscape. 

– Klara Ström 

Obsessed Play and I Play Obsessed II will be performed on Nov 21 at Halland Art Museum

Klara Ström works with sculpture, installation, and performance. Her practice draws on literature and art history, transforming familiar narratives into something new. Inspired by fairy tales, symbols, mythology, and folklore, she gives space to the imagination and a longing for the unknown.

https://klarastrom.se/

The residency Forgotten Realms (Kungsbacka Municipality, 2024) explored new interpretations of reality in the borderlands between the everyday and the fantastic, myth and reality, and past and present. It drew inspiration from Tjolöholm Castle and its rich connections to both Nordic and Celtic folklore, reflected in the breathtaking nature surrounding the estate as well as within the castle environment itself.