K.G Westman: The Suit Maketh the Man (2024)

Research project & Performance Series

In the autumn of 2023, I bought a blazer from a second-hand store in downtown Stockholm, Sweden, that turned out, according to a tailor’s label, to have belonged to a “Professor K. G. Westman”. I was curious about him, I wondered who he was. This set off a frantic research journey that led me to uncover the story of a shadowy figure who had a profound influence over Sweden’s politics during the first half of the 20th century.

I was in possession of the jacket of a man, who not only was one of the founding fathers of modern democracy in Sweden but he was also a man that rewrote history books, censored criticism of the nazi regime, and the foreign minister during the war years, a time when Sweden sold 43% the iron ore that Germany then used to make tanks, bullets, and railroads.

A collaborative performance lecture with the artist Aron Fogelström on K.G Westman was performed twice: once at Handelshögskolan with the SSE art initiative and on Kulturnatten 2025 at Kulturhuset with the poetry publication L’amour La Mort for the launch of their 18th publication: Problemet/Lösningen. The story of K.G Westman’s life and actions was told in Swedish while Fogelström (mis)translated what I said into English.

At Kulturhuset a secondary performative installation called UNCRITICAL SCORE (2024) took place underground. Visitors were invited to apply Westman’s logic: use a bottle of tippex on a book of poetry to blot out anything they found to be critical. The mirror is turned on the audience: they have agency, an ethical choice posed in relation to Westman’s choices that enabled a world war and a genocide.