Theresa Traore Dahlberg

2023

Photo: Margareta Bloom Sandebäck

The artist and filmmaker Theresa Traore Dahlberg was the 2023 festival artist at Göteborg Film Festival. In her work, Traore Dahlberg explores how different materials and symbols have the ability to change and emerge in a new shape, which both in an evocative and exquisite way linked to the 2023 focus at Göteborg Film Festival: Homecoming.

For her art, Theresa Traore Dahlberg has been awarded Becker’s artist scholarship, and for her filmmaking, she has been nominated for a Guldbagge Award for Best Short Film with The Ambassador’s Wife. Now Göteborg Film Festival has the great honor of presenting Theresa Traore Dahlberg as the 2023 festival artist. Her work will adorn both the festival poster and the festival’s programme catalogue. The unveiling of the poster took place on December 1 at Lynk & Co.

“What an honor to be this year’s festival artist! I have so many strong memories from the festival, both as a visitor and from when I have shown my own films. Contributing to the festival with a work of art will be an exciting challenge”, says Theresa Traore Dahlberg.

Theresa Traore Dahlberg was born in 1983 in Värnamo, but grew up on Öland and in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Today she lives and works in Stockholm. Traore Dahlberg has studied 16mm experimental film at The New School in New York, attended the documentary film and radio education at Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts and has a master’s degree in fine arts at the Royal Academy of Arts. Her art has been displayed at exhibitions both in Sweden and internationally, and she is currently doing a future-inspired solo exhibition at Andréhn-Schiptjenko in Stockholm and at the Atlantic Center of Modern Arts in Las Palmas.

“Theresa Traore Dahlberg is one of Sweden’s most exciting artists, portraying stories of globalization in films and other works with an exquisite feeling for interesting places and the people who populate them. Therefore, her mix of motifs is particularly interesting in relation to Focus: Homecoming, this year’s focus at Göteborg Film Festival. Over the years, we have had the pleasure of premiering several of her films at the festival, so it feels fantastic to be able to welcome her back as a poster artist!”, says Jonas Holmberg, artistic director at Göteborg Film Festival.