BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
Swedish street artist Herr Nilsson has long built his work around a deceptively simple collision: take characters and images associated with innocence, beauty, childhood, or cultural familiarity and let them misbehave, or worse.
Sweetness meets guns, alcohol, rebellion, and darker impulses; the joke lands first, but a certain discomfort is rarely far behind. His recent works around Stockholm continue that strategy, drawing on sources as different as Swan Lake, Winnie the Pooh, and John Bauer’s beloved fairy-tale princess Tuvstarr. What connects them is not simply provocation, but the idea of a familiar character breaking character—escaping the roles, behaviors, and meanings that have been assigned to them.
Several of these paintings have found an especially effective stage beneath a bridge at Lillsjön, a lake in Stockholm, where Nilsson uses the water itself to complete the composition. The setting is picturesque but shadowy, distorted reflections in currents, public yet protected. The reflections give his altered cultural icons a second life below the surface, opening the imagination for altered subrealities.
Here ballerinas perform Danse des petits cygnes while carrying and firing Kalashnikovs in a work responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh drift away from respectable expectations for a drunken day out; and Bauer’s once-innocent Tuvstarr returns as a figure who, in Nilsson’s telling, has simply had enough.
Taken together, the pieces suggest a recurring narrative of innocence confronted by the adult world—and familiar figures deciding, sometimes gleefully and sometimes angrily, that they are no longer going to behave as expected.
BSA: The Ballerinas. At a glance, this image appears straightforward. Four young dancers from the corps de ballet are seen performing the sequence “Danse des Petits Cygnes” from Swan Lake. On closer inspection, the viewer sees them locking arms and holding two fired war-grade weapons, AK-47s? Can you tell us what inspired you to combine these two seemingly different concepts into one? Are you speaking up against firearms violence?
HN: Yes, they are AK-47 Kalashnikovs, and the ballerinas are performing Danse des petits cygnes, or Dance of the Little Swans, from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. It is a very beautiful work, both visually and musically, and I got the idea for the painting while watching the ballet at the Stockholm Opera House with my daughter, who is a ballet dancer.
The painting is a comment on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I wanted to create something beautiful and poetic while, at the same time, holding a sense of brutal and raging violence.
Some friends from Estonia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, visited me in my studio while I was working on the painting. They told me that there is a strong tradition in the Soviet Union, and now in Russia, of broadcasting Swan Lake on television and radio when a president dies or another major crisis occurs. My friends told me that it’s quite common that people in Estonia can say to each other, like an expression, that they are hoping to watch the Swan Lake on TV soon.
Also when independent Russian media outlets were forced to shut down following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including the TV channel TV Rain (Dozhd), they ended their final broadcast by playing Swan Lake.
BSA: Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin? Floating on a river, an inverted umbrella as a boat. They seem to be drunk. Do you wish to draw attention to youth drinking with this image? Underage drinking?
HN: It’s Today, My Favourite Day, featuring Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, plays with roles and expectations, with the ways people are expected to act and behave. It is about rebelling against those expectations, or simply hiding away with your friends, having fun and party like a maniac.
BSA: This image shows a Non-binary or Gender non-conforming individual. They are nude; their right breast is exposed, and the primary symbol of anarchism, Circle-A, is drawn on what their left breast would have been. Their face is cast in shadow, looking down and mostly covered by an abundant cascade of blond hair. What’s the significance of this illustration? What inspired you to paint it?
HN: Tuvstarr is based on a very famous and beloved Swedish painting by the artist John Bauer. You can see the original here: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvstarr_%28sagofigur%29#/media/Fil:Ännu_sitter_Tuvstarr_kvar_och_ser_ner_i_vattnet.jpg
John Bauer was a famous Swedish painter and illustrator, best known for his atmospheric and mysterious fairy-tale illustrations in the children’s book series Bland tomtar och troll (Among Gnomes and Trolls), first published in 1913.
One of his most iconic characters is Tuvstarr, an innocent fairy-tale princess who ventures into the forest and encounters representatives of the wild: the fairies, the Skogsrå (forest nymph), and the forest tarn. Along the way, she loses the three symbols of her royal dignity: her princess crown, her white dress and her gold necklace, ultimately ending up sitting beside a dark forest tarn, endlessly gazing into the water. Eventually, she disappears, leaving only a white flower behind.
In my painting, she is no longer quite so innocent. It is about having had enough, embracing the wild and rebelling.
BSA: Is there a particular reason why you chose to place them under a bridge other than the resulting effect of seeing the image’s reflection on the water?
HN: Yes, I have painted three different motifs that needed a water reflection to complete the image. The atmosphere underneath that bridge is beautiful, but also dark and mysterious, which I found perfect for all three paintings.
It is a popular spot for walkers and runners who go around the lake Lillsjön, so the paintings are seen by many people. In Sweden, graffiti and street art are strictly forbidden in many places and are often removed within hours or days. The water beneath the bridge is quite deep, which gives the paintings some additional protection.
At the same location, back in 2017, I painted my own version of Caravaggio’s Narcissus, replacing Narcissus with Justin Bieber, sitting by the shore and staring at his reflection in the water. I have attached that painting in this email.
