Kristina Bength

In her watercolor painting, Kristina Bength uses photographic archival material as a starting point. Based on this, she tries to create new stories. Early photography is a constant source of inspiration–painting becomes a way to transform the images and make them the artist's own. Bength has often used and revealed repressed and forgotten stories, including in a project documenting the prison and mental health environments where the photographer and actor Amanda Kristina Pedersen moved during the early 20th century. Pedersen used several identities, both male and female, and was convicted of fraud and forgery.

Kristina Bength (b. 1984, Falun) is educated at the Academy Valand in Gothenburg, with a degree in 2008, and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. She is today a well-established artist who has exhibited at art galleries and museums around Sweden, and has also been represented at art fairs abroad.