OTHERWORLDLY

With the support of Viriditas foundation, Jonas Liveröd, the Janny-Lisa Clasons stiftelse & Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse, Luftslottet has launched the project Otherworldly in order to research, highlight and present Swedish artifacts created in extraordinary states of mind. 

In the fringes of mainstream society there have always existed creators, visionaries and subcultures whose creations are objects that carry unconventional ideas, unusual purposes or extraordinary personal visions. These objects are often truly unique but seldom considered art by its maker. The creators’ working conditions may sometimes have been limited but whose ingenuity has no limits. The creating process can sometimes be fuelled by frustration, sometimes by psychiatric issues, often by spiritual motives. 
Within this project you can find examples of works by visionaries, psychiatric patients, prison interns, spiritual explorers, outsiders and prophets, but also historical objects made to be used in altered states of mind such as in magic and healing. This project touches on what is often called Outsider art but we do not intend to limit the scope of Otherworldly to this – many of the pieces presented were never intended to be an art object, but rather had functional, esoteric or ritual use.
This collection will be presented to the public as a continuously expanding digital exhibition with the aim to also realise a physical museum exhibition of a selection of these objects. 

This is not an academic project, and the definitions of the creations that can be included in Otherworldly are purposely blurry. This is to allow the full complexity of the subject to remain intact. By keeping the definitions unclear, we can avoid limiting or defining the subject in a way that does not do justice to its complexity.