The Mirror Institution emerged while one of the founders, Joanna Sandell, was director of the contemporary art space Botkyrka konsthall in Sweden’s greater Stockholm-area. Joanna Sandell created a library and publishing house of artist’s books: Labyrint Press (with artist Pia Sandström), and the residency Residence Botkyrka. These are still a part of Botyrka konsthall programme.

In the early 2010s curator Katrin Behdjou Arshi and architect Tor Lindstrand joined Botkyrka konsthall and Residence Botkyrka. Together with Botkyrka konsthall they moved a studio of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology master programme of architecture Botkyrka’s Fittja neighbourhood. The programme was created for young architects to learn from a site with a diverse population and communities, but also to involve artists, architects and city planners in the highly experimental curriculum of the Design Process Studio in Fittja.

Tor Lindstrand developed “Towards an Institution” – the concept of allowing an arts institution to grow organically in communication with a neighbourhood and its many diverse communities and citizens.

Emergent ideas of having animals around the art space and residency, a kitchen in the centre of the institution, and the process to move the kunsthalle from its then location to Fittja had begun to manifest. One of the drivers for moving the kunsthalle was Residence Botkyrka, located in a small apartment on Krögarvägen 26 in Fittja, it became a temporary home to many artists, activists, architects, art historians, musicians and educators from all over the world.

Building on groundwork laid by Joanna Sandell

Following several collaborations in South Africa in the previous decade, Tor Lindstrand and artist collective Kultivator were invited to project-residencies in Cape Town, South Africa in the winter of 2013/14 which lead to collaborations with Red Hill Literacy Project, run by Buyiswa Ponti and Steuart Wright prompting Tor Lindstrand to coin the term “The Mirror Institution”, posing that ideas around Botkyrka konsthall, where citizens and visiting artists were influencing the development of an art institution with diverse practices such as food, crafts, books and city planning could be “mirrored” in any other place, starting with the informal settlement of Red hill, South Africa.

A part of Tor Lindstrand’s vision of a new art institution was a place for starting a revolution and falling in love. Joanna Sandell and Steuart Wright got married in the summer of 2016.

The Mirror Institution was formed, an informal arts institution and creative idea that “mirrored” project-residencies. Swedish architect Jakob Wiklander and artist Militza Monteverde were the first resident artists in South Africa, hosted by The Mirror Institution, curated by Joanna Sandell and Steuart Wright.

In 2018 a new reflection of The Mirror Institution emerged, Silon Studios was launched on the island of Öland, just a thirty-minute horse or bike ride from the artist collective Kultivator. The programme is open to enquires around art production and is dedicated to developing the site and its surroundings through arts and culture.

The Mirror Institution continues to mirror and reflect the ideas and programmes of existing arts institutions, whether small or large. It mirrors our current curatorial and artistic ideas, making space for the experimental and joyful at a core of creating.