Edith Hammar

Edith Hammar is a non-binary Finnish artist, illustrator and author. Hammar’s work explores non-normative existence within various environments and situations, transforming the hostility of these surroundings into erotic dreams, a world where one can belong.

Hammar was born and grew up in Helsinki but has also lived in Stockholm, for seven years, and currently resides in Gothenburg, Sweden. Hammar studied at Gerlesborgsskolan in Stockholm between 2012 and 2014, and in 2017 they graduated with a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. In 2021 they designed a memorial to the first recorded Swedish LGBT march, which took place in Örebro, Sweden, in 1971. The memorial is displayed outside Örebro City Hall.

Hammar is also represented with three works in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm: Verktyg / Tools (2021, ink on paper, 89.8 x 64 cm, MOM/2021/368), Badrum / Bathroom (2021, ink on paper, 146.5 x 112.5 cm, MOM/2021/369) and Tändstickor / Matches (2021, ink on paper, 85 x 130 cm, MOM 2021/370). Other collections with works by Hammar include Haninge Konsthall, Haninge, Sweden and Malmö Art Museum, Malmö, Sweden. Amongst Hammar’s exhibitions counts the solo exhibition Edith 2:2, Örnsköldsviks Museum, Örnsköldsvik, Sweden and the group shows What’s the use for intersectionality?, Feminist Culture House / STOA, Helsinki (2021) and Swedish acquisitions: Matches at Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2022).

Based on her queer-themed black and white drawings depicting gay culture in Helsinki, Hammar has been called a “Tom of Finland for the 2020s”. Hammar debuted with their first book, Homo Line, a melancholic graphic novel about Hammar’s complicated and contradictory feelings (equal measures of love and hate) for Sweden and Finland, in 2020. Homo Line won the Most Beautiful Books Award and the Grönqvistska foundation award in 2021. This was followed up by another graphic novel, Portal, in 2023. Portal received the Prisma LGBTQI+ Literature Prize for graphic novel in December 2023, as well as the Swedish Literature Fund Prize, of 10,000 Euros, the following year. Hammar also wrote and illustrated the interactive audiovisual drama Sexy pants and other problems for YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company, Finland’s national public broadcasting company) which, in 2022, was awarded first prize in the media competition Grand Prix in Potsdam.

Hammar has, since then, been invited to create a site-specific work on walls and floor at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (Nicole Eisenman and Edith Hammar. My Eyes Are Like Funnels, My Ass Is a Hand, 21 September 2024 – 19 January 2025), where the drawing Hot and Slutty Giants (2024) is an enchanting utopian vision where gigantic characters lose themselves in desire and pleasure. In connection with the exhibition (concerning 40 works of art that were purchased for Moderna Museet’s collection in the acquisition project “Swedish Acquisitions 2021”), 7 May – 14 August 2022, Moderna Museet wrote the following about Hammar:

Edith Hammar deftly draws dreamscapes where desire and longing for tenderness and belonging imbue the images with life and sensualism. Sharp contrasts and outlines without shadow are characteristic of their style, and we are invited into the most intimate spaces and situations: couples embracing in a tiled bathroom, sweating in a workshop or languidly playing with fire. Erotic and innocent at one and the same time. The gender nonconforming figures, tight belts, boots, leather trousers and jeans in line with queer aesthetics appear often in Hammar’s singular imagery, giving glimpses from invisible subcultures. Despite the seemingly brutal attributes, the images reveal a warm and considerate affection that radiates love.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation