“My violent mind”, is a selection of photographical work by Martin Sjoberg. They date from 2001-2008.

They are not a serie in the usual sense, they do however share a subject matter that can be described as investigation into a self, a history and a violence. They are all staged, some come through as more real, other as more symbolic.

They are a compilation of images that are made to stand by themselves as they are separate works.

They circle around and remind us of three different issues in contemporary history.

Some of the photographs show scenes from a South American landscape that has endured numerous attempts of christening and westernization.

To discover and conquer distant cultures is a western world concept with an immense historical and cultural significance. Its effects reflect on both victim and victimizer. The mechanisms of colonialism are in our contemporary world, on a psychoanalytical level, still in place.

Uncharted territories, the title of some of the works is referring to two different territories, the first and most obvious is that territory which is being explored or conquered in the traditional sense. A territory targeted for a search after that something which will bring fame and fortune to those who discover or tame it.

The second journey aims to explore and map a mental territory.

A territory where the actual search for presence becomes responsible for the creation of absence - like in the contemporary dilemma, where attempts to bring democracy and peace to yet another foreign territory, gains little else besides destruction and violence, thus making the quest futile and meaningless.

The work is a narrative about mapping that space in the mind, where there’s no one else present, just silence, emptiness and an urge to keep looking.

A space where the historically founding question about human existence, Who am I? Has been exchanged with the contemporary one, where am I?

The second problem addressed in the work comes into play by the staging of different scenarios in which psychological reactions to the unknown are acted out.

A specific unknown in the form of the exotic and foreign jungle environment.

The work is on one level referencing a history of colonialism from a psychoanalytical stand point, pointing to how, due to fear, a loss of language occurred, thus creating actions worthy those of imbeciles and psychopaths, along with a need for destruction. Something closely related to the history of a white male identity, this being the third issue.

The photographs are staged in a manner that resembles the tradition of history painting, but executed with a contemporary twist.

The artist has taken on the role of the actor, playing out states of mental retardation, lunacy and hallucinatory delusions, a mental space where the search for the ideal leads to something worse than the real. What’s acted out is a result of an ever escaping ideal. There’s an old allegory present here. An allegory over a western civilization with the idea that only the fool speaks the truth is still in play.

This is being expressed in a more contemporary mode;

As the act of facing your history may well make you insane, any attempt of avoiding it could make you act as if you were.

“My violent mind”, consists of 12 photographs that range in size from 90x130 cm to 130x90 cm to 180x 240 cm. The medium is cibachrome, c-print and black and white fiber print. The photographs are mounted behind glass.