The five paintings in this exhibition are the artist’s renditions of those made by her older sister; a woman destined to be an artist throughout her life, but whose ambitions were unexpectedly thwarted as she reached adulthood. It is through the process of reinventing her sister’s canvases that Westergren confronts the disappointment, sibling rivalry, guilt, love, and respect that shadow her art-making choices.

Inspired by fields of Swedish wild flowers, Westergren’s spun sugar-candy flowers hang from the ceiling in a floating meadow. The piece functions as a nostalgic metaphor for childhood which when viewed in hindsight appears graceful, sweet, fragile, and, most importantly, unrecoverable. Charlotta Westergren’s Åhus Sommaren 1974, explores the power of sense memory through an installation of light and scent intended to recall the Swedish seaside. For Westergren, this is reminiscent of Åhus, a town on the coast of the Baltic Sea where her family owned a house. Working with perfumers from Quest International Fragrances, who used the company’s unique Aquaspace technology to capture the underwater smells of algae, sea life, minerals and brine, Westergren remakes a significant element from her memory of the summers by the sea in Sweden. The room, constructed specifically for the installation functions to contain the scent and create the Åhus summertime light.