Charlotta Hammar: Unsheltered Island

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Swedish government urged citizens to familiarize themselves with the locations of nearby bomb shelters. And that’s exactly what Charlotta Hammar did.

From the publisher:
In 2020 the artist Charlotta Hammar had an email conversation with The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency regarding the fact that there are no civil defense shelters on the island she lives on outside the city of Gothenburg. In her artistic practice Charlotta explores questions on existential threats, crisis management and how to cope with living in a very unstable world. The shelter issue has always been a matter of interest for Charlotta and in 2023 she got funding from Swedish Arts Grants Comittee to work full time with the Unsheltered Island project that resulted in an exhibition and this book. It’s partly taking place seven floors underground in the huge shelters in the University Library in the city center of Gothenburg, a space also used as storage for a large number of books, all unique. Another part of the book is photographs from the island Styrsö, with no public shelters but a lot of military, abandoned ones. In the photographs we see traces from the non existing shelters and it is sort of a desperate quest for a safe space in a shaky existence.