Artists: Camilla Iliefski - Eva Zethraeus

HB381 presents Shimmering Real: Perception and the Spaces Between, a two-person exhibition by Camilla Iliefski (b. 1970, Sweden) and Eva Zethraeus (b. 1971, Sweden). This exhibition brings together two artistic practices that have evolved in parallel over more than two decades. Rooted in a shared educational background at HDK School of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg, Sweden, the artists’ work is connected through an ongoing investigation of balance and imbalance, material sensitivity, and the interaction between color and organic form.

Through distinct yet complementary material approaches, the exhibition stages a dialogue between the soft, tactile surfaces of hand-tufted textiles and the hard, undulating presence of porcelain. Despite their material differences, the works articulate a common visual and conceptual language grounded in process, detail, and a deep commitment to craftsmanship. Rather than producing collaborative objects, the artists work alongside one another from a shared thematic framework. The exhibition unfolds as a constellation of individual works that respond to and inform each other, creating a spatial and conceptual conversation in which contrasts — soft and hard, fluid and structured, intuitive and controlled — are held in productive tension. Together, the works form a cohesive whole that reflects both shared concerns and distinct artistic voices.

In Iliefski’s hand-tufted tapestries, vibrant chromatic gradients interact with sinuous, rounded forms. Her compositions are defined by irregular borders within which the wool fibers of the tufted pile are trimmed to various levels of depth. Threads of innumerable hues intermix, creating the effect of shading and of radiating waves of light. Iliefski’s textile works move in the borderland between the abstract and the figurative. Inspiration is drawn from nature — vegetation, landscapes, surfaces, sea and sky — and from the landscape’s transformation over time. Nature appears as something in constant motion: emerging, dissolving, and reforming. Scales are distorted and the motifs take on a dreamlike, surreal character. A small, fragile bud may be enlarged, transformed, and become more insistently uncanny. The works exist in a state between reality and dream, where the familiar gradually shifts into something else.

Iliefski’s non-objective compositions, sometimes referencing landscape, at other times hinting at still life, recall the 20th century avant-garde practices of Wassily Kandinsky’s rhythmic cadences, Hilma af Klint’s mystic abstractions, and Sonia Delaunay’s vivid Simultanist designs. Iliefski’s undulating line work encapsulates the ebb and flow of objects in motion, spinning airborne or swaying gently in the sea’s currents. Her background as a graphic designer is apparent in her eye for color and predilection for precise interlocking shapes. Indeed, the exploration of color is central to Iliefski’s artistic practice. Colors flow into one another, blend and shift; pale tones deepen and intensify, while contrasts emerge and dissolve. The colors are not constant but shimmering and shifting. Within the process lies a willingness to remain unfixed and inquisitive in each new encounter with color — to stay open to wonder and the unexpected. The varying heights within the textiles create volume and lend the works a bodily, organic presence. The working process is intuitive and unfolds in the moment, with a strong focus on the material and on encounters between different color combinations. Presence in the act of making is essential — a sensitive listening to the material’s possibilities and resistance.

Zethraeus’ practice, meanwhile, is characterized by a slow, process-driven engagement with clay, where repetition, incremental variation, and material sensitivity play central roles. Her surfaces carry traces of growth, erosion, and accumulation, referencing natural processes without resorting to direct representation. The work occupies a threshold between the organic and the mineral, the intuitive and the controlled.

Working primarily in porcelain, she creates exquisite and tenuous biomorphic sculptures at the intersection of representation and abstraction. Inspired by marine life, Buddhist gardens, and viruses, the artist examines the beauty and phenomena of life cycles and replication and the unpredictable variances that occur. In Shimmering Real, Zethraeus presents a new body of porcelain sculpture that investigates symbiotic relationships in nature and the fragile interdependencies that structure living systems. Each individual component of a piece is hand-thrown; the work is then assembled and subsequently undergoes a number of glazings and firings to achieve its finished state. Light and glaze interact to produce subtle shifts, reinforcing the sense of a dynamic yet restrained ecosystem. Her works are not only wholly realized individual objects, but also suggest the greater context of an immersive environment. With this imagery, she constructs and deconstructs intricate forms that encapsulate the complex manner in which organisms grow and evolve.

The exhibition brings together individual works that function both autonomously and as part of a larger spatial constellation, forming a cohesive sculptural landscape. Conceived as a relational environment rather than a sequence of discrete objects, the interplay between the two artists’ works positions sculpture and tapestry in relation to one another through proximity, scale, and surface, allowing visual rhythms and spatial tensions to emerge. Rather than articulating a singular narrative, Shimmering Real proposes a relational mode of perception — one that foregrounds coexistence, vulnerability, and mutual dependence as fundamental conditions within both natural and sculptural systems.

Iliefski has been active as a designer since 1998, working cross-disciplinarily in the area of design and crafts. Her interest is in the role that process and material play in her work. Iliefski holds a master’s degree in visual communication from the School of Design and Crafts, Göteborg University, where she serves as a senior lecturer. Her work is in the collections of the Röhsska Museum, Västra Götalandsregionen, Region Sörmland, and Norrköpings Konstmuseum.

Zethraeus is a ceramic artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden. She received her MFA from the College for Design and Craft at Gothenburg University. She has exhibited widely, nationally as well as internationally, and her work is in the permanent collections of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and the Röhsska Museet in Gothenburg.