BIG BAD WOLF
2024, Konsthall C , Stockholm
Big Bad Wolf is a project involving 500 children aged five, preschool educators, and art educators that uses fairy tale logic and imagination as a tool to look at crime and punishment through the eyes of children. Younger and younger people are increasingly involved in organized crime, both as victims and perpetrators. In relation to the current political discussion in Sweden about lowering the age of criminal responsibility, this project asks: before children become indoctrinated by the laws and punishment systems of adults, regulated by the state, what are their own ideas about justice and accountability?? By involving children in the discussion of the wolf’s actions, Josefin Arnell opens up questions around laws, punishment, and accountability from a child’s perspective, using their ideas to think about society at large.
Fairy tales are magical worlds that have long been used to teach morality. Many of them are dark, filled with punishment and sin. Together with 60 preschool teachers, 2 art pedagogues, and 500 children, Arnell deconstructed a modern version of the well-known European fairy tale The Little Red Riding Hood. In this reimagined tale, everyone is the wolf, and the story has no fixed ending. Instead, it unfolds through themes of grooming, sibling love, snake eggs, a famous nail salon, friendships, betrayal, popcorn, and many, many wolves.
Over the course of a two-day workshop with the preschool teachers, Arnell developed this new story, which was then read to the children. The children contributed by discussing the consequences of the wolves’ actions and by making drawings that extended the story’s path and continuation.
The project consists of professional development for teachers, workshops at all municipal preschools in Farsta, Stockholm, and an exhibition at Konsthall C. Konst i förskolan is a method that supports ways for children to express themselves and to make art a habit. For the teachers, it provides inspiring professional development and new tools and methods to work with art and creation. Each year, the format involves around 1,000 children, with about 500 of them as artists.
The exhibition BIG BAD WOLF brings together the rewritten tale of Little Red Riding Hood, 600 drawings by children, animations based on their images, and a sound piece where children discuss the many paths of the wolves. These works are presented alongside an installation of a prison imagined for children, complete with a surveillance camera and a series of wolf costumes. The project also extends beyond the gallery through workshops with preschool teachers at Konsthall C, workshops at preschools led by art pedagogues, and accompanying educational materials, connecting the exhibition to everyday pedagogy and artistic practice.
Curator: Mariam Elnozahy
Managing Director: Erik Annerborn
Educators: Malin Dahlberg and Birgitta Adolfsson
Assistant: Lizzy Deacon
Animations: Lizzy Deacon, Daphne Rosenthal, Aaron McLaughlin
Sound mix / Music: Jonas Ohlsson
Studio intern: Yuanyuan Zhou
Konsthall C intern: Lea Trübenbach
Supported by Stockholms Stad
