It is not rare to see nowadays collaborations between artists and musicians, but it is maybe still unusual to find a creative mind that freely moves between various disciplines such as art, design, theatre and music. Swedish Monica Karlsson saw no boundaries between any of these practices and reunited them all in her life.
Born in 1943, Karlsson became better known as Moki Cherry after she married American jazz musician Don Cherry, who became the stepfather of (singer-songwriter and rapper) Neneh (daughter of Moki and percussionist Ahmadu Jah).
Moki had an unusual approach to life: in the '70s, while many artists challenged the establishment rebelling against in, she focused on more experimental projects and seemed more interested in promoting values she deemed worth protecting and fighting for. A feminist, Moki took up a socially critical stance in her later collages, but was not as argumentative as her friends Marie Louise Ekman or Niki de Saint Phalle.
Throughout her life she tried to present other ways of living, coming up with projects about counterurbanisation and subsistence-farming, and organising art projects for kids or interdisciplinary creative practices. She once explained in an interview: "I don't think of my art as similar to, or belonging to, any particular culture".
Moki, who was a percussionist, encouraged Don Cherry to study ethnic music, and among other instruments he took up the doussn'gouni, a hunter's guitar from Mali.
Moki and Don lived in a utopian and alternative world: the musician would play his flute to the birds in the woods outside Stockholm and wander in town still playing while children followed behind. Together Moki and Don played festivals and exhibitions, organising happenings, creating music, art, posters and album covers.
They also came up with the concept for Movement Incorporated (later Organic Music) and founded the Octopussteatern project for kids and teenagers. In 1970, the family moved to an old school house in Tågarp, Skåne, where they lived according to the motto "the stage as a home, and the home as a stage".
In the early '70s Don and Moki Cherry held a children's jazz workshop at Stockholm's Moderna Museet; Pontus Hultén involved them in 1971 in the museum's "Utopias & Visions 1871-1981", an exhibition inspired by the revolutionary government that ruled Paris in spring 1871, the Paris Commune. For the occasion the Cherrys ran an open stage as part of this exhibition. This collaboration was successful to the extent that, when Pontus Hultén was asked to start up Centre Pompidou in Paris, he invited them to set up a temporary "Atelier des enfants" (children's studio) until the institution was completed.
The connection Don and Moki Cherry had with the Moderna Museet is being renewed and relaunched through an exhibition celebrating Moki's world. On display on the fourth floor of the museum, "Moment - Moki Cherry" includes a rich variety of her works and documentary material from her long partnership with Don.
Among the highlights there are large textile application pieces that Moki was famous for but there are also drawings, collages and stage photos from 1967 to 2007. The main point of the curator Fredrik Liew was indeed telling Moki and Don Cherry's story through a series of objects, that become testament to the multi-art world they lived in.
"Throughout her artistic career, Moki Cherry lived without making any clear distinction between life and art. Most of her works have no frame, both in the literal and figurative sense. What we see is not paintings. Each object is intimately linked to a context, ideologically and practically. Touring were integral to the music, dance and situations in which people met, but their travels were also one of the reasons why Moki made so many textile appliqué pieces. These works were portable, and easy to pack and hang," explains curator Fredrik Liew.
In one of her drawings Moki tells the story of a king who goes to see a wise man to learn the secret of creating pictures. The wise man begins by saying that you first have to understand painting. But he goes on to explain that, in order to understand painting, you have to understand dance, and to understand dance you need a knowledge of instrumental music, and to achieve that, you first have to learn to sing.
This argument in the form of a myth helps to illustrate Moki Cherry's approach to art: her multifaceted oeuvre will undoubtedly be inspiring to many Moderna Museet visitors and you can bet that, at some point, we will see her colourful tapestries and collages reappearing on the runways (our bets are on Gucci by Alessandro Michele or Valentino by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli...).
"Moment - Moki Cherry", Moderna Museet, Exercisplan 2, Stockholm, Sweden, until 8th January 2017.
Image credits for this post
Moki Cherry, Brown Rice, 1975 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet
Moki Cherry in her home in Gamla Stan, Stockholm. Photo: Private
Moki Cherry during a performance with Organic Music 1970s. Photo: Private
Moki Cherry, Untitled, 2005 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet
Moki Cherry, Untitled, 2005 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet
Moki Cherry by her sewing machine in the Dome during the exhibition "Utopias and Visions" at Moderna Museet, 1971. Photo: Private
Moki Cherry, Untitled, 1980 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet
Moki Cherry, Organic Music, 1967 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet
Moki Cherry, Första scenen ögonblicket (First Scene the Moment), 1970 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet
Moki Cherry, Untitled, 1967 © Moki Cherry. Photo: Prallan Allsten/Moderna Museet
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