Artistic Statement
Ami Bergman’s artistic practice informs an act of (re)discovering and (re)building a rapport and relationship with the self, moving forward from past traumas and hardships in life.Placing herself front and centre is driven by compassion and marked by self-love and reconciliation with who she is and how she appears today in a society built on norms and standards that do not always seem to include her; a woman who will be deemed older and factually also is.Her practice is a mirror of now living and enjoying life with its various inherent realities, reveries and oddities. She has taken a step back in the past, but this is her claiming her space and time in the world.
Ashik Zaman. Editor-in-chief, C-Print Journal.
Text, Book, Swedish Aquisitions 2021 , Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Publ 2024;
The colour treatment in ”self-portrait” is sophisticated, setting pale vanilla against turquoise blues. Ami bergman’s work is not based on an academic background , and her work is purley pleasure -driven. But the seemingly carefree simplicity is deceptive. The palpably psykal shapes and poses evoked by the paint are based on many years of skilled sculpting and drawing. But Bergman’s self-portrait is not just about colour and form ;it is about something profoundly existential, about claiming space, not trying to please, defiying limiting norms for how women of a certain age should look and behave. The woman is centraly placed in the work.With brush in hand , she looks back at us with a steady gaze. Although her feet are outside the picture, we perceive her as standing very firmly.
Text/Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2022;
Ami Bergman(b 1966) The self fills the pictorial space with ease .The turquoise-blue background is painted with brushstrokes that follow the body, which is dressed in contrasting light yellow-colored dress.Ami Bergman’s artistic practice is grounded in years of highly- skilled work using painting and drawing.Often placing herself at the centre, it is as if she repeatedly wants us to remind us of something. Bergmans self-portrait ,of her self as an artist, prompt questions of representation ,of not pleasing, or defying the limiting norms of how an older woman should look or act.With a paintbrush in her exaggerated hand she meets the viewers eye with an exploratory gaze. The hands are those of a worker ,and they possesses the ability to tireless create a place of one’s own in the world.
Malmo open studios 2023
Ami Bergman’s (b. 1966) artistic practice is a progression from traumas and difficulties in life. She works with her femininity and the patriarchy. By showing herself and her relationship to the outside world by painting self-portraits, dresses, clothes, movement, dance, nature, writing text she lives and enjoys life more. The work is a reflection of what she encounters of realities, strangeness and the odd in life. Bergman is represented in the Moderna Museet’s collection and in a private collection in the Netherlands, has recently shown work at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Governor’s residence in Skåne and Lundgren Gallery, Mallorca and received scholarships from the Malmö Art Museum and the Skånska Konstnärsklubben.
Artist Statement Liljevalchs 2024
I am moving forward from trauma and difficulties in life. Events in my childhood, family history and what it entailed in behaviors and events later in life led to the diagnosis of cyclothymia, the mildest variant of bipolar disorder II with many mental hospital stays earlier in life. Now I am well adjusted to medications and through various therapies, positive encounters with old and new friends and colleagues, I live a meaningful and good life where I have the strength to work focused forward. I have an artistic education with many hours of basic technical exercises in drawing, painting and sculpture. Now I devote myself to self-compassion, acceptance, reconciliation and how I appear in a society where norms and standards do not always include a woman like me. Expectations of how an older woman with my experiences should be and live. I dont please, only when I want to and often put myself at the center of my art. To create my own place in the world. Now I meet the world and people with an exploratory gaze and my artistic practice is a mirror of what I encounter in terms of realities, differences and the oddities in life.
Artist statement August 2025
The self-portrait is the core of my creation, I draw and paint in a constant search for something. I reexamine the relationship to myself and my body. It is not about pleasing or defying, but about capturing what I see: a body that I have come to terms with. I paint this female body that looks back with an affirming, exploratory, steady and sharp gaze, sometimes I have a small charcoal pencil, pen or brush in my oversized hand. I have always been fascinated by bodies, houses and interiors – creating my own place in the world, both external and internal, as a kind of Fengshui for the soul. This interest is closely linked to my health, as I live with two chronic illnesses, which I have learned to accept and manage partly by repeatedly painting and drawing my own body. I am curious about painting and want to develop it further, for example by being in nature and trying to capture its essence and the psychological experience of color, among other things. I have no direct academic education in painting to lean on but have a solid drawing, painting and sculpture education, business in the background. I have a passion for my work and the material. Now I am positive in my life, devote myself to the practice of self-healing, that I face my fears, am not so much seeking to heal my traumas but navigate them and turn outwards into the world and my place in it and to my fellow human beings.
Ami Bergman Artist 