Johanna Willenfelt (she/her) is an artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her writing, text- and performance works have a suggestive quality and often lend themselves to cultural critique and philosophical investigations. The artist has a longstanding interest in the interpretation of pain, its events and enunciations, specifically focusing on gendered pain. The artist often researches and reassesses medical and social archives, out of which intra-embodied practices and affects are discerned. Adapted, these gestures are brought back to be performed site-specifically and site-consciously, in an attempt to challenge prevailing assumptions and traditions of thinking and valuing the body in pain.

Current projects centre on the subversive and productive potential of pain: instead of succumbing to the idea that physical suffering makes one’s own body visible and all-encompassing – a locked-in body, cut off from impressions and activities from the outside world – the artist interprets and considers the value that is brought about with an increased sensibility. In her work she emphasises the desire for a newfound knowledge, rather than affirming a lack as a result of something lost.