Miriam Bäckström is a Swedish artist based in Stockholm. She emerged as an artist in the late 1990s and was most notable for using the approaches of documentary photography to expose and undo conventions of depiction and storytelling. The conceptual and visual precision of her photographic work soon gained wide international recognition, not least after Harald Szeemann included it in the Venice Biennale in 1999. Her images of empty interiors, tells a story in which the individual is absent. Film sets, museum displays and apartments became “figures” speaking of the “diverse characters” that were as yet physically absent in the images. Bäckström’s ongoing interests explore how history is told, and processes of creating and recreating memory using photography, text, theatre and video.

Many of Bäckström’s more recent works explore the documentary and the fictional, interweaving narratives that create new and uncertain realities and identities.