Free fall

A strong, active woman with water spurting out from under the board she stands on. The artwork Free Fall by Anna Uddenberg is part of the Swedish state’s gift to Finland on the centenary of the country’s independence in 2017.

The bronze sculpture Free Fall is a modern Statue of Liberty installed four metres up in the air complete with a fountain. Swedish artist Anna Uddenberg’s sculpture features a woman riding a flyboard, equipped with a water jet nozzle. The sculpture emanates ecstatic feelings closely connected to today’s experience culture. The artist has taken inspiration from the moment when experiences become products and vice versa. Uddenberg maintains that flyboarding is an activity that shows our notions of what the future will be like, while directing our thoughts to concepts such as freedom, security and technology.

On Anna Uddenberg

With her wilful sculptures and objects, artist Anna Uddenberg has the capacity to create meanings that are both appealing and surprising. She challenges our notions of time, space and ingrained familiarity. Central to Uddenberg’s art are investigations dealing with the body, culture and self-realisation. In her work she gives form to the social codes of consumer culture in regard to class, gender and sexuality.

In her artistic practice, Uddenberg has developed a complex order that is the result of influences from different cultures. In her work, normality, media and ingrained realities are reinterpreted as new, hybrid stories and expressions.

On Hanaholmen

In 2017 Finland celebrated 100 years as an independent state. In 2016 Public Art Agency Sweden was commissioned by the government to produce a permanent artwork on Hanaholmen – a cultural centre for Sweden and Finland in Esbo, outside Helsinki. Founded in 1975 by the Government of Finland, the cultural centre was a gift to Sweden, who in the late 1960s remitted a large part Finland’s war debt.