“Fantasy is real to me, it’s like a religion”, says Emelie Östergren. “We need fantasy to stay sane”.
According to Östergren, fantasy is not an interruption of reality, but rather a different aspect of it. Her drawings are full of holes, cracks and passages defining the transition from one world to the other(s). And it is through these cracks that fantasy creeps into everyday reality – it comes out of framed pictures hanging on the walls, it hides under the floors or behind the curtains. Where do all the objects that constantly disappear from one panel to the other end up? What happens to the many different characters passing through the pages of her comic books?
Emelie Östergren likes to fill her stories with elements that are invisible, yet clearly there, always shifting from real to unreal.

curated by Squadro Stamperia Galleria d’Arte

Emelie Östergren’s style has something of Ingrid Vang Nyman’s clear lines and Edward Gorey’s taste for the uncanny.
This exhibition is a descent into Östergren’s universe, childlike and grotesque at the same time. A seductive journey into her unique work, capable of turning deep sensations into plastic shapes thanks to a drawing style that entices the viewer and then captures him like a Venus flytrap.

with Amadine Meyer, Emelie Östergren
moderator Ilaria Tontardini
in collaboration with Swedish Arts Council, Fondazione Nuovi Mecenati, Alliance Française di Bologna, Erasmus Mundus in Culture Letterarie Europee

Emelie Östergren, born in 1982, is an illustrator and author educated at the Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. Her comics and illustrations have been published both in Sweden and abroad, among others in the American magazine The Believer. She is also known for her comic books Evil Dress and Duke and His Army – A Dream Revisited. 
In 2014, Östergren made her debut as a children’s book author with Elefantstenen (The Elephant Rock), and in 2015 came Här är världen (Here is the World, Hippo Bokförlag), written by Ylva Karlsson and selected for the White Ravens. Östergren was among the 31 illustrators who represented Sweden at the Children’s Book Fair in Bologna in 2013.