MASU

One’s own movement (2026)

One’s own movement is a temporary sculpture; it only exists here right now. It is part of a material narrative and consists of two thousand wooden slats that are joined with cable ties. One’s own movement is not an image or carrier of a particular content; it is its own and has its own story.

When MASU works, the focus is on the joint drawing. Sometimes we draw with ink and graphite on paper in different formats, always together on the same image, and increasingly we draw in the room with wood. Since the start in 2012, we have focused on the joint work where we share the image surface or the room and in this both lift and challenge each other. Over the years, we have worked with different forms of frameworks or rules to provide a more focused direction forward in the work. It can be about format, techniques or content, for example only black and white and grayscale, no representation, no more than ten minutes in the same place before we change, etc. The interweaving of expressions, wills, directions and materials has enabled us to work more clearly with a common voice instead of two parallel practices. The commonality has also given us space to look more outward in the work, to meet the surroundings which have been places, people, insects, weather and fauna and let these take their place in the story.

One’s own movement comes from the project (Material) Location Recordings that MASU worked on between 2018 – 2025 where the same material was built up, packed up, moved and built up again in a new place, ten times.

It started at Bastionen in Halmstad, during Art Inside Out’s residency Artistic Work in Progress where we worked on site with three thousand battens and cable ties for three weeks in the indescribably warm spring of 2018. During the work, we asked visitors to write on the sculpture with black spirit pens about “their best place” and over the weeks that passed, the sculpture became more and more a textual work where thoughts and dreams of place became traces of a longing to share and make an impression. When the exhibition was over, we packed up the material and moved it to a new location, again and again. From the same principles and the same material, One’s own movement has now emerged here, ten years after the project started in Halmstad, in the exhibition Markings – 10 Years with Art Inside Out.

– MASU

MASU is an artist duo comprising Mattias Gunnarsson and Susanne Westerberg; their practice is rooted in drawing, conversation, and spatial sculptural work, with the act of making—practical and collaborative—serving as the driving force of the process. MASU operates as a migratory practice that emerges through temporary, site-specific works.

https://masu-projects.se/

The residency Artistic Work in Progress (Halmstad Municipality, 2018) explored public space with Halmstad as a starting point. The work focused on Bastionen, Österskans, Norre Port, and Andersberg, as well as conversations about the development and future of these places. Temporary public artworks, “rear-view mirror” processes, and conversations with residents explored how art can create vibrant environments and foster new relationships with ourselves and others.