Miriam Bäckström

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.

Miriam Bäckström's images of empty interiors tell of stories in which the individual is absent. Film sets, museum displays and apartments become "figures" speaking of the "diverse characters" that are as yet physically absent in the images. They link to Miriam Bäckström's interest about how history is told and processes of creating and recreating memory using photography, text, theatre, and video. Many of her more recent works explore the documentary and the fictional, interweaving narratives that create new and uncertain realities and identities.