Bitte Alling
1940, Sweden

Photo: Birgitta Åberg-Andersson
Bitte Alling born 1940 in Malmö, Sweden.
A war child with bunkers, German aircraft engines, blackout curtains.
A Swedish tiger
A new classmate just sat there in his desk with straight back, hard braids, white apron surrounded by a wall of silence
No one explained why she came and did not know a single word in Swedish but had a Swedish name
To this day I do not know Bodil's Jewish name
Afterwards
Never again war
No more ghettos
No more concentration camps
Konstfack (University College of Arts)
Artists who shocked art values became my teachers
Taught me to study the treacherous language of the mass media image
Critically examine insidious war propaganda
Cut to counter-images such as Christer Themptander's political photomontage
Oil painting by Gerhard Nordström who painted in the Vietnam War in the Swedish landscape
Hertha Hillfon who freed the clay from traditional hero portraits and enlarged everyday bread, children and women's hump
These and my inner images since 83 years I always carry with me in my creation
Then as now
War has always existed somewhere in the world
Now it comes even closer to Sweden's borders