Ellen Hedin - Bruise 1

Artist: Ellen Hedin

In 2025 Ellen Hedin extended her practice into painting with the work Bruise, created with makeup, horsehair, ink and polyester, continuing her investigation of fragility, strength and unconventional materials. She speaks about her series Bruises in the following way:

“I was once a horse girl - perhaps I still am, only without the horse. In these paintings, I return to the relationship between two bodies: human and animal. A relationship that moves between freedom and confinement, closeness and resistance.

The animal can mirror ourselves, as an extension of our own body, yet at times it suddenly resists. In that moment it becomes clear that it is something else - a reminder of both powerlessness and presence.

Each painting stands on its own, yet they are bound together by the same movement. The series also becomes a kind of self-portrait: a place where strength stands beside fragility, where the polished meets the raw.

The materials are drawn from everyday life: makeup from my own and friends’ cosmetic bags, ink and fabric that settle like a film or skin. In some works, I have embroidered with horsehair. The bruises and bodily imprints are taken directly from my own body - not only traces of injury." 

Ellen Hedin (b. 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden) lives and works in Gothenburg. She holds a BFA in Design from HDK Valand (2022). Her degree project Pangaea explored small scale production as an alternative to global mass production. Early in her career she has received several grants, including Carl Malmsten’s Foundation, and exhibited at Stockholm’s Museum of Furniture Studies.