Artist talk with Leila El Harfaoui, year 2024

Leila was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1974. Her parents came to Sweden from Morocco in the 60s. Leila is an artist based in Stockholm.
In her artistic practice she responds to or questions current events and developments, her works are often based on disturbances in the world or that she herself disturbs a certain order in the world with her works.
Leila has created several series of paintings using vibrations and frequencies, some of these series are inspired by quantum physics and the thesis that everything that exists consists of vibrations. Sometimes she has worked with sound frequencies to create vibrations and sometimes she has worked with vibrations from herself.
Leila is a multidisciplinary artist who works with, for example, painting, sound, sculpture and installation as expressions. She is inspired by science and technology as well as art, society and existentialism.

‘If people understand what we are as beings, that everything vibrates and that nothing is permanent, and that I am you and you are me, really. If all people understood that, then xenophobia would be obsolete, which it is/…/’

Leila graduated with a master’s degree from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm this spring, in 2024. During her studies at ‘Mejan’, she also worked as a workshop leader and coach in several diffrent places and platforms in Sweden. Among other things, as an art and technology coach at Studio form, which is a platform for young people who are outside the educations and the labour market, developed by the city of Stockholm.

Photographer: Helené Spjuth

Art curator:
Sarah Svärd Tawiah