Nygårds Karin Bengtsson (born in Mora, Sweden, 1972) works with staged photography. She has a background studying both theatre and documentary photography before entering art school; University of Art and Design (today: Aalto University), Helsinki, Finland, from where she holds a Master of Fine Arts (2003).
Her background is visible in her photographic works, the theatrical and the ordinary take place side by side, fiction and reality is interwoven with each other. Staging as a method of working with photography is for her a means of making a moment more intense; to rather capture the experience of what has happened than the happening itself. Her working process can be more likened to that of a theater or film director's; she begins with an empty scene and carefully builds her motif.
Nygårds Karin's body of work is a lifelong ongoing project about life’s gradual transition from present time to memory: What remain of all the ones that we have met, of all the places we have visited and all the stories we have amassed? What remain of the time we have turned our backs to?
Nygårds Karin has had numerous solo exhibitions at Art Museums and Art Galleries mainly in Sweden. Her - to date - largest exhibition "With Our Backs to Time" was on display during 2021-2022 at the Zorn Museum, Mora, Sweden. She has also been exhibited at Fotografiska (The Photography Museum) in Stockholm, Sweden (2015). She has received numerous grants and is represented at e.g. Malmö Art Museum and The National Public Art Council, Sweden.
