Ivona Pelajić and Fredrik Stjernqvist form the art duo Studio Mono/mint based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Studio Mono/mint focuses on creating spatial installations in urban environments, as well as conducting workshops and co-designing with children. Ivona is a Croatian visual artist […]
Ivona Pelajić and Fredrik Stjernqvist form the art duo Studio Mono/mint based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Studio Mono/mint focuses on creating spatial installations in urban environments, as well as conducting workshops and co-designing with children. Ivona is a Croatian visual artist and designer living and working in Sweden. She holds an MFA in Child Culture Design from HDK-Valand (Gothenburg University) and a Mag. art. from the Fine Arts Academy (Zagreb University). Pelajić has conducted numerous art and design workshops in Croatia, Germany, Belgium, and Sweden. She has showcased her works in several group and solo exhibitions. Apart from teaching, she is a multidisciplinary artist with a primary focus on painting and scenography. Ivona’s paintings reflect her impressions of living spaces fused with emotional experiences through the lenses of time and memories. In her latest series of paintings, she is experimenting with intuitive painting, inspired by her intimate spiritual practices and the invisible lives of plants and nature.
Fredrik is a Swedish sound and wood artist with a background in pedagogy (Mag. art. in Teaching at Gothenburg University). Over the years, he has conducted several projects focusing on sound and woodwork, where children often play a major role. Working with audio, Stjernqvist aims to explore unpredictable harmonic sound interactions that occur when using unique signal chains and pushing synthesizers to their limits while incorporating the delicate balance between soft and beautiful with rough and decaying.
About the project
In the past, Berlin was full of “junk playgrounds” where fields of trash and rubble were converted into places for imagination, unsupervised play, and freedom for children. As the city developed, only bits of it remained. In their project during the Fresh A.I.R. residency, Studio Mono/mint focuses on discovering these leftover bits and works with them. The artists aim to identify and explore the undesigned and unsupervised elements in the streets of Schöneberg as a starting point in creating an installation. To decode play triggers in the most unexpected places of the city, they work with local children through a series of workshops. They see the undesigned street as potential – not only for unsupervised, unexpected play – but also as an incentive for citizens to become active co-creators, rather than passive consumers in the city. The outcome of the project will be a spatial installation with playful, interactive elements.
Photos: Christian Rückert
