Art talk: Hugo Karlsson and Marianne Schmidt
Hugo Karlsson
Born in 1987, Hugo Karlsson has been an active artist at the Inuti Foundation in Stockholm since 2009. He works with a variety of media including film, sculpture, and writing, but his foundation lies in drawing—primarily in pencil or ink. His preferred subjects are characters and human figures, often depicted through a bizarre lens where both light and darkness coexist naturally.
Karlsson has a fascination for language and fantasy-worlds. He likes to find different ways to express and communicate his inner world and has a series of work he calls Stress Drawings – a way for him to process stress and anxiety: “I always begin with an eye. By letting the pen move freely to build an image, I allow thoughts and feelings to emerge.”
Hugo is a commissioned website- and book illustrator and regularly contributes comics to the magazine iMAGO. He has participated in exhibitions, festivals, and presented both in Sweden and internationally. In 2019, his short film You and Eye received an award at the Oska Bright Film Festival.
Marianne Schmidt
Marianne Schmidt (b. 1978) has been an active artist at the Inuti Foundation in Stockholm since 2015. Though Schmidt holds a master’s degree in architecture, she primarily works with sculpture, film, drawing, embroidery, and writing in her artistic practice.
Schmidt has described her practice as a way to search for a coherence and connections that often elude her in her everyday life. To explore universal and societal structures through personal experience. As an adult she was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which gave yet another perspective on the world around her — and on her creative work.
Marianne has played a leading role in multiple projects, including Living Autism (2016) and Out by Art (2018), and has exhibited at events such as Open Art Örebro (2022), the Outsider Art Festival in Helsinki (2022), and the Oska Bright Film Festival in Brighton (2024). In 2024, she completed a public art commission for Botkyrka Municipality in Uttran: an interactive sculpture titled Om du vill vara med mig (If you want to be with me).
Body and Mind
Hugo Karlsson and Marianne Schmidt's video-work Body and Mind (2019) is installed on the small screen ('Lillskärmen') in the north corridor, on the ground floor of Sveavägen 65 between April 22 and May 11, 2025. Read more about it here.
Hugo Karlsson and Marianne Schmidt
Body and Mind, 2019
Duration: 2 minutes
The film is installed in collaboration with Inuti Foundation. Inuti works with artistically talented individuals with intellectual disabilities and individuals within the autism spectrum. During the spring of 2025, Art Initiative and Inuti foundation has partnered to host art workshops and install Body and Mind at SSE. Find out more about the workshops here.