The exhibition Extensions at the Galería Elba Benítez comprises a selection of works by Miriam Bäckström (Stockholm, 1967) in which the celebrated Swedish artist photographed small pieces of textile or metal in extreme close-up and then transformed the resulting ultra-high-definition images into woven tapestries stretched over three-dimensional discs and cones. The resulting image-objects mark a significant departure from the traditions of photography and textile and form part of Bäckström’s longer-term project of challenging established notions of perspective, imagery and objecthood.
In her practice, driven by relentless technical experimentation and development together with a team of specialists in digital imaging, engineering and industrial weaving, Bäckström strives for a speculative enlargement of our field of vision and our understanding of the world. Wanting us to ’see more than we have agreed to see’ and seeks to ‘augment augmented reality,’ Bäckström gives a collective – or community – of viewers simultaneous access, in shared physical space, to images that ‘follow the laws of virtual reality’ but would otherwise be confined to secluded online platforms that contribute to the atomisation of society.
