Reflecting on images and care while looking to the past, the Swallowimage series reinterpret 17th-to-19th-century oil paintings depicting scenes of death, disease, or healing. The artists reverse these antique canvases and inoculate the unpainted side with the immunosuppressive fungus Isaria sinclairii. This parasitic fungus has been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine as a potion for eternal youth, and its active substance was patented in the 1990s by a pharmaceutical company that developed the first pill for treating MS. Borrowing its title from German 18th-century “Schluckbildchen”—devotional portraits of saints known for healing that the faithful would ingest for healing—Swallowimage considers how modern-day treatments exist relative to images, and faith.

The Swallowimage series was first exhibited in Flare-Up at Accelerator in 2025.

Further reading:

Rosenkvist, Adam. ”Den märkliga vanan att äta bilder”, Svenska Dagbladet, April 4, 2025.