Monica Sjöö: The Great Cosmic Mother
Beth Williamson, Studio International
December 2023
This exhibition, the first major retrospective of work by the Swedish artist Monica Sjöö (1938-2005), presents more than 50 works from her 40-year-long career from the 1960s to the 2000s. The exhibition has already been shown at Moderna Museet in Stockholm where the climate activist Greta Thunberg was photographed visiting. Now it is in Oxford, around 70 miles from Sjöö’s adopted home of Bristol. Sjöö left Sweden in 1955, aged 17. After travelling and living in various European cities, she moved to Bristol where her then-husband’s family lived. It was there she built her career and raised her family. Sjöö devoted her life to advocacy for gender justice, eco-feminism, matriarchy and social equality. As an artist, activist and writer, politics and spirituality were embedded in her artistic practice and throughout her career, she demonstrated a deep and enduring commitment to women’s rights and environmentalism, fighting for freedom from oppression in all its forms. […]