Artist
Aleksandra Jarlas explores mythological hybridity as a feminist strategy for reimagining the female body, sexuality, and our relationship with the natural world. Drawing on Nordic and Slavic folklore, she creates hybrid figures—women merging with wolves, forests, animals, and cosmic forces. These figures inhabit liminal spaces where binaries dissolve: virgin and slut, sacred and profane, pure and impure. In this in-between state, identity becomes fluid, embodied, and self-defined.
The She-Wolf is the central archetype in her visual cosmology. She embodies instinct, relational intelligence, and erotic knowledge—forms of power historically framed as dangerous or excessive. In her paintings, the body is often low to the ground, alert, and sensorial, moving through environments that feel alive and responsive. These landscapes are not passive settings but active participants, blurring the boundaries between body and terrain, self and surroundings.
Through painting, symbolic diagramming, and myth-making systems, Aleksandra constructs a universe where transformation replaces objectification. The body becomes a site of becoming—shifting, adaptive, and entangled with ecological rhythms and ancestral memory. Hybridity is not presented as fragmentation, but as a mode of agency.
By reclaiming hybridity, instinct, and pleasure, she aims to generate new mythologies that reconnect the body with autonomy, imagination, and a felt sense of ecological belonging.
Born in Katowice, she graduated from the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School, earned a Bachelor’s degree from Central Saint Martins in London, and completed an MFA in Visual Arts at Konstfack in Stockholm. She is currently participating in CuratorLab at Konstfack, expanding her interest in collective formats, self-organized infrastructures, and curatorial practice as a critical and propositional tool.
Since 2020, she has served as Artistic Director and Curator at Konsthallen Meken, where she develops exhibitions as collaborative platforms for dialogue and situated knowledge production.
Working between Poland, Czechia, and Sweden, she is interested in art beyond objecthood — as assembly, relation, and civic gesture — engaging Central and Eastern European histories and border imaginaries as spaces for collective reflection and emancipatory potential.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025 Aurora Loving – Galleri Svarta Gran
2022 Metamorphosis – Rättviks konsthall
2020 Liljevalchs konsthall, Vårsalongen 2020
2018 Changing geographies, Museum Anna Nordlander
2018 Liljevalchs konsthall, Vårsalongen 2018
2017 Anna-Lisa Thomson Till Minne, Uppsala konstmuseum
2016 Stipendiatutställningen, Konstakademien/The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm
2016 Den begravda jätten, Avesta konsthall
2016 Negotiating Authenticity. In Search of an Ideal, Spring Exhibition, Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design
2016 Face Negotiation, Galleri Hörnan, Falun
2015 Negotiating Authenticity. In Search of an Ideal, Fine Arts Master Exhibition, Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026 Kaleidoscope: AAU Curatorial Studies Final Exhibition, Kobka 17
2026 Husera omtänkande i samlingar — Grafikens Hus research project, Dalarnas Museum
2024 Det oförutsägbara — Uppsala konstmuseum / Uppsala stadsteater
Liljevalchs Vårsalongen (multiple editions)
Konstakademien Scholarship Exhibition
Grants and Awards
2016 Anna-Lisa Thomson Till Minne, Uppsala konstmuseum
2016 Webers/Ribbing/Beskow stipendium till unga konstnärer och konststudenter, Konstakademien/The Royal Academy of Fine Arts
Workshops, talks, projects, presentations, teaching
2025 Anglo-American University in Prague summer school, visiting lecturer, part of teaching team; contribution to curriculum development; practical demonstrations of technique and processes
2024 The Prague City Gallery, Palaces of Pleasure/Historic Sites in Contemporary Culture, two-day roundtable creating a platform for sharing experiences, ideas, and best practices in the use of historical sites for contemporary cultural and social activities
2020- Konsthallen Meken, curator and artistic director
2019-2020 Högskolan Dalarna, visiting lecturer
2018-2020 Borlänge Modern, BOMO, curator and artistic director
2016-2017 Liljevalchs konsthall, art educator and host
Representation
Uppsala konstmuseum, Västerås konstmuseum, Region Dalarna, Avesta kommun, Region Uppsala, Leksands kommun, Rättviks kommun, Sveriges Hembygdsförbund, Gagnefs kommun