Julia Bohlin
Cikoria

Exhibition opening 28th August / 18:00 Ivan Vazov 18th Str.

Welcome to the exhibition, titled Cikoria, by Julia Bohlin. The exhibition is a conclusion of her artist residency at ARV.I in Vishovgrad.

Cikoria happens. Cikoria hills. If I scatter my knowledge of its fragile, short-lived blue, a need for a lantern schtick pins me down. Did blue happen if I didn’t see it? Is the color something I can no longer erase from me? If so, is now my relation to it a pound-for-pound deadlift, an incubator heckling its own additives, restrained by the absurdity of human overidentificational limp sith. A comfort spell, bound by licks and abilities to tole. Hardcore layer not yet approached, still unlayering with my radicant peers, eradicating unwittingly Saint Strata of Surroundings.

Cikoria is economical with its blue. One flower, one day. It opens in the morning and by noon has begun its withdrawal, closing itself against the day. A private thing happening to a public landscape. Generous. Event, economy, withdrawal. The flower does not need to remain blue for me. It does not need to perform its blueness continuously in order for blue to have happened. Cikoria is blue until it isn’t. I like this about it. The flower does not seem particularly committed to being a flower, at least not for very long.

Perhaps this is where drawing begins. Not with the decision to make an image, but with the small violence of deciding that removing oneself lightly is proactive. We add something to a place and call it ours. We remove something and call it empty. We paint over a thing and later wonder what was underneath. Public becomes private by accumulation. Private becomes public by being left behind. The blue is gone and somehow there is more blue. Cikoria closes around noon. This is perhaps its contribution. It knows when enough has happened.

- Lars Nordby

Julia Bohlin (b. 1995) is a Swedish artist based in Gothenburg. She holds a BFA from HDK-Valand – Academy of Art and Design, Gothenburg (2025), and a BA in Social Anthropology from the University of Gothenburg (2019). Her work has been exhibited at venues including Galleri Konstepidemin (Gothenburg), Galleri Blunk (Trondheim), Gyldenpris Kunsthall (Bergen) and Not Quite (Fengersfors).