In 2021, the Museo Reina Sofía welcomed the first monographic exhibition in Spain of Charlotte Johannesson, a pioneer in fusing the loom and information technology. In conjunction with the exhibition, the present video contains an interview with the Swedish artist, zooming in on her beginnings with the vertical loom and her artistic influences and development towards creating images with the first computers with screens.

Johannesson’s ahead-of-its-time and revolutionary approach meant she was able to deconstruct and re-appropriate artisan methods, transforming them into a tool of huge political unrest, with her tapestries becoming powerful standard bearers of contemporary society.

Charlotte Johannesson (Malmö, 1943) is a textile and digital artist who was part of the Swedish counterculture scene in the 1960s and 1970s, developing the majority of her career on the margins of conventional artistic circles. More recently, she has participated at the 32nd São Paulo Biennial (2016) and the Nordic Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, and her work is displayed in museums such as the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.