PRINTMAKING IN TRANSITION : Curating relations with printmaking as a tool for action

This thesis investigates how the contemporary museum for printmaking Grafikens Hus motivates printmaking in socially engaged art projects based outside of the conventional gallery. It explores how printmaking is practiced as a tool to achieve artistic and curatorial goals, and investigates what Grafikens Hus strives to achieve by making space for meeting places. The analysis is based on in-depth readings of three case studies and two interviews with the director of Grafikens Hus Nina Beckmann and the curator Ulrika Flink. The theoretical perspective strives from concepts relating to audiences, relations and site-specificity outlined by curators engaged in socially engaged practices. The theoretical framework has also been informed by the curator José Roca’s approach to printmaking used as a device to achieve specific conceptual goals. The thesis is structured in three chapters: the first presents Grafikens Hus’s objectives and strivings, the second explores how Grafikens Hus use printmaking to stimulate confluence, the third examines Grafikens Hus’s ambition to curate meeting places. This thesis shows that printmaking is practiced as method for participation, used as tool for collaboration, seeking to create active subjects and co-producers. Furthermore, it demonstrates how Grafikens Hus use participation to form relations with places and thus generate a third room: places recharged with value by a dialogue oriented mind-set.