Malin Pettersson Öberg

Grey Material (working title) is an ongoing video project made in relation to the book by Swedish author and publisher Pernilla Ståhl The Triumphal Arch of Mogadishu. Colonial Architecture and Urban Planning (Eddy.se, 2021). For this I will be collaborating with a photographer in Mogadishu, Somalia, and with Swedish composer and musician Stefan Johansson. The work explores the triumphal arch as a (colonial) monument and form, through its shape, color, material, weight and other ”bodily” features. It also explores its ”being” – the arch as a colonial, cultural, heritage and witness, and all the stories, traces and relations that go with it. The video’s sequences have (and will be) filmed in Paris, Rome and Mogadishu, in 2023-2026. We are planning a first public screening as a hybrid format, combining or drawing on the exhibition, performance, and lecture / conversation in one.

The project is so far supported by the Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation in Sweden, but hopefully more applications for funding will be granted. Thank you to Pernilla Ståhl, Ida Östenberg, Samuel Nicolas, Stefan Johansson, Mångkulturellt Centrum in Botkyrka (René Leon Rosales and Edda Manga), Tatiana Letier, the Somali Section at the Swedish Embassy in Nairobi, Hamdi Osman, and the artists at Slakthusateljéerna for your help and support at this early stage.

More details will follow.


Production clip of the Triumphal Arch in Paris, shot from a motorbike in 2023.

About the book The Triumphal Arch of Mogadishu. Colonial Architecture and Urban Planning:

“To build, that is the goal, the only goal, with every colonial war,” declared the French Marshal Hubert Lyautey in the late 19th century. The European colonial powers left behind a vast urban legacy. They founded new cities and rebuilt old ones on several continents. Traces of this urbanisation remain visible to this day, for better or for worse. What concepts lay behind the creation of these cities? And how do these now independent countries view this legacy? Based on five former colonial cities – Kolkata, Tunis, Harare, Swakopmund, and Mogadishu – Pernilla Ståhl tells about the colonially built  in her book The Triumphal Arc of Mogadishu: Colonial Architecture and Urban Planning.”  (from Bokus’ website 2023).

Image of the Umberto I Arch in Mogadishu, Somalia, before it was restored
(featured in Pernilla Ståhl’s book, image by Shabelle Media).