*Queens Museum Exhibition Publication
Fia Backström’s The Great Society explores how communities take shape and survive in the face of converging environmental and extractive crises. The exhibition is based on extensive field research in West Virginia, where the artist began traveling and meeting with locals in 2017. Backström responds to the area’s photographic history, government hearings, and community embroidery practices through her own material and computational processes that include photography, videos, language, and textiles.
This is the artist publication to Fia Backström: The Great Society, ongoing now at Queens Museum until May 17, 2026.
Fia Backström: The Great Society is organized by Lindsey Berfond, Assistant Curator and Studio Program Manager with Hitomi Iwasaki, Director of Exhibitions and Head Curator.
About the Artist
Fia Backström (b. Stockholm, Sweden, 1970) agitates the social life of language and materials through her work in photography, writing, installation, and performance. Her practice maintains a longstanding inquiry into the glue of collectivity. Recent projects include The Great Society at Brief Histories, New York (2024), The last of US—that safe space above I in the word life at The Kitchen, New York (2022), and Facing Her Land – notes from elsewhere, Thielska Museum, Stockholm (2019). She has participated in group exhibitions at Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York (2015), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010), the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010). Backström was the subject of a survey at the Artist’s Institute (2015) and represented Sweden in the Venice Biennale (2011). Her work is in the collections of Moderna Museet and the Whitney Museum. Backström lives and works in New York.
