Brilliance, by Alexandra Stratimirovic, was a light installation, and a colourful story, created especially for Nationalmuseum. The Artist had been inspired by past Nobel festivities and the museum’s exhibition Pär Engsheden and Sara Danius’s Nobel Gowns. During the Nobel Week 2020 you could experience Brilliance on Nationalmuseum’s façade.
When December comes, we all need a little light in the darkness. In 2020 perhaps more than ever before. During the Nobel Week, December 5–13, Stockholmers and visitors to the city were invited to Nobel Week Lights Stockholm – a celebration of lights, weaving together art and technology in a playful way. The light festival was also a way to celebrate the Nobel Laureates 2020. Some fifteen public spaces and buildings, of which Nationalmuseum was one, around Stockholm were lit up and served as stages for some spectacular and artistic light installations. All light installations could be experienced outdoors with safe distance to others. They were lit from the afternoon until late in the evening.
Brilliance – for Nationalmuseum
Brilliance was created to be displayed on the façade of the Nationalmuseum building, which is owned and managed by Statens fastighetsverk, the National Property Board Sweden. The work was a dynamic and colorful light story, inspired by past Nobel festivities and Nationalmuseum's exhibition Pär Engsheden and Sara Danius’s Nobel Gowns. The installation consisted of 60 LED profiles mounted on the windows in the museum's middle floor, on both sides of the main entrance. The lights from them shimmered slowly in non-figurative patterns. The artist wanted to convey a sense of sublime creativity and courage translated into a movement of light and colour. Brilliance shimmered like a melody, sometimes like a whisper, sometimes like a scream. A light inspiration in the winter darkness.
An earlier version of Brilliance was shown on the façade of the Göteborgs konstmuseum in connection with the city's Christmas celebration in 2017.
About the artist
Alexandra Stratimirovic is an award winning and internationally active artist with a special interest in light. She lives in Stockholm and studied ceramics and glass at The University of Applied Arts and Crafts, Belgrade, and lighting design at University of Fine Arts and Design and the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
Stratimirovic works mainly with site-specific art installations characterized by light used in a sensitive and careful way. She has made many permanent site-specific artworks for public places such as schools, hospitals, train stations and residential areas, both in Sweden and abroad. In recent years her artworks have been included in exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Konstnärshuset in Stockholm, Jardin du Palais Royal in Paris, and various art events in London, Amsterdam, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Tokyo, Osaka, Verona, Skopje and Singapore. Alexandra Stratimirovic is co-founder of the Lighting Guerrilla festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia and, since 2018, the curator and artistic director for Skopje Light Art District Northern Macedonia.
Nobel Week Lights Stockholm
Nobel Week Lights Stockholm is created and produced by Annika Levin, Alexandra Manson, Lara Szabo Greisman and Helmet. The initiative is part of the programme for Nobel Week and has been undertaken in collaboration with the Nobel Prize Museum with support from the City of Stockholm, the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce and the Institut Français de Suède, along with a number of other partners and lighting companies.