Forget Me Not

Hele­na Calm­fors is a New York-based artist and per­former whose work is inspired by the arche­type of the dom­i­nant woman. It is a role with which she iden­ti­fies and yet gen­tly sub­verts by intro­duc­ing ​‘soft’ ele­ments, such as flow­ers, into the typ­i­cal­ly ​‘hard’ aes­thet­ic vocab­u­lary of dom­i­na­tion. Cen­tral to her work is the fem­i­nist belief in the right to own one’s body; she also explores the theme of reclaim­ing iden­ti­ty through hier­ar­chi­cal pow­er play. The act of cre­at­ing inti­mate scenes and expe­ri­ences is present in all aspects of her art, rang­ing from per­for­mance to water­colour paint­ings, and dig­i­tal and instant pho­tog­ra­phy. She uses Polaroid as a way of rep­re­sent­ing the ephemer­al­i­ty of per­for­mance and the fleet­ing inti­ma­cy of the dominant/​submissive rela­tion­ship. With an intro­duc­tion by the Indi­an-Amer­i­can artist, Anki­ta Mishra, For­get Me Not is Calm­fors’ debut monograph.

Hele­na Calm­fors is orig­i­nal­ly from Swe­den but has lived and worked in New York since 2014. Her work has been includ­ed in numer­ous group exhi­bi­tions in the Unit­ed States, includ­ing in 2024: ​‘Pride Reflect­ed’, Saatchi Art (online exhib­it); ​‘Dress Up’, at the Harsh Col­lec­tive; ​‘Love in the Time of Chaos’, at The Lock­er Room; and The Oth­er Art Fair, Brooklyn.

Anki­ta Mishra is a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary artist based in Brook­lyn. As a first-gen­er­a­tion Indi­an-Amer­i­can, born and raised between two cul­tures, their work is guid­ed by potent mem­o­ries, gen­er­a­tional con­ver­sa­tion and cul­tur­al redis­cov­ery. Her pri­ma­ry inter­est is in defin­ing the ways we express iden­ti­ty, in tan­dem with the ways we strug­gle to con­nect with it.