A Queen of Art

The artist Ann-Sofi Sidén shocked the Swedish audience when she, as the performance persona Queen of Mud, was smeared in clay at the one of Stockholms biggest warehoses. She is one of Sweden's most important video artists and her installations have been featured in art galleries, museums and biennials all around the world.

In the film we go through the artist private archives, movies and photos she has taken throughout her adult life. It becomes a unique insight into an artist's life and work. We get to experience her sadness of living in the suburb of Märsta, all she wanted was to escape to create herself and her own life. Sidén wanted an adventure and traveled out to the world. She was one of the first female artists in her generation to move to Berlin and New York. Cloesly, we get to follow her work and everyday life, from her punk era in Berlin to her installations in New York and Stockholm.

The film gives us a nude and close portrait of an artist. We follow Sidén to hotels where she worked with surveillance, to brothels where she lived with prostitutes and when she is alone on a long horseback ride through Texas.

Ann-Sofi Sidén
A female role model for younger generations of artists. Sidén has always been proud and showed solidarty to her simple background. Her loyalty is to them who are exposed; women who leave their children, prostitutes in the Czech Republic or a paranoid psychiatrist in New York. Sorrow and the longing for a place to belong characterize many of Sidén's works. Today, Sidén works with the the scenography at the Opera House in Stockholm.

Photo credit: Ewa Rudling/TT