Camilla Engström was born in Örebro, Sweden, in 1989. She has spent much time in Shanghai and in New York City, where she studied at Parsons School of Design and later worked as a fashion illustrator. Her bucolic, metaphysical landscapes celebrate the healing properties of Mother Nature. The hallucinogenic colours and voluptuous curving forms call to mind the cut-outs of Henri Matisse, while channelling the female energy of Georgia O’Keeffe, and her fellow Swede Hilma Af Klint. Hailed as both “feminist and fecund”, Engström’s art offers an uplifting riff on millennials’ preoccupations spawned by the digital realm, from body shaming to the cult of the self.
In Spring 2023, Engström spent a month at the Kostyál family summer home on the island of Blidö, in the northern Stockholm archipelago. Ever deeply sensitive to place, to the experience of being alone and immersed in nature – she loves to paint outdoors – these paintings take as their point of inspiration both that island and others in the outer archipelago, transforming them into an almost spiritual abstraction, with dream-like forms and an intense, acid palette.
In September 2023, Engström was part of a group presentation at KIAF Seoul, Carl Kostyál. In 2024, Engström will present solo presentations at NADA, New York, Marfa Invitational and in London in three solo presentations for Carl Kostyál.
