The Landscape, the Light, the Gaze – Matts Leiderstam and Prince Eugen’s altarpiece in Kiruna Church

In the summer of 2025, Kiruna Church—weighing six hundred tonnes—will be relocated to the “new” Kiruna in one piece. Prince Eugen’s famous altarpiece will remain in its current place during the move and make the 5-kilometre-long journey inside Gustaf Wickman’s church from 1912. The unusual piece features neither crosses nor people. Instead, it brings our attention to a field accompanied by a grove of leafy trees. This is a landscape located somewhere far away from Kiruna. It did not look like that back then, and it does not look like that today. Might it point at how Kiruna’s landscape might look in the future? One that has been affected by climate change? The artist Matts Leiderstam has studied the origins and creation of the painting, giving particular attention to the artist’s sketches. In this way, he delves further into a personal interest in landscape painting, and how landscape paintings are perceived by the viewer and their gendered gaze. Also included in the exhibition are a number of new paintings and other works. In collaboration with Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde, where the exhibition will be shown at the end of 2025.

Bild: Matts Leiderstam.