LILITH
Elin Lundgren, 1973, Sweden
Petter Pettersson, 1972, Sweden
LILITH builds visual worlds through intuitive, collage-like processes using performance, film, text, sound and sculptural installations.
In recent years, LILITH’s work has largely revolved around human inner states and norm-defying impulses, where self-invented rites and ceremonies have become an important unifying element. Rites that create meaning and belonging – both at dramatic turning points and in everyday situations.
Rites and ceremonies can be understood as sets of rules in games, play and staged presentations in all their forms. LILITH’s interest in ritual is directed toward its significance both from a micro-perspective – as a way of holding together small groups such as families, circles of friends or sects – and from a global perspective, where religion, nation and ultimately the entire species become central to the human drive for survival.
LILITH proposes alternative patterns of thought to the agreed-upon reality that we, willingly or unwillingly, adapt ourselves to. These are dark but often humorous worlds where norms are ambiguous and contradictory, where rules pull in different directions, and where meaning often arises in the in-between rather than in what is immediately comprehensible. Here, what happens in thought and dream is just as true as what takes place in the external world.
At its core, LILITH’s artistic work revolves around universal human themes such as alienation, love, longing and grief, with an ambition to enter the viewer’s consciousness as a disturbance, and through that approach the question of what it means to be human.
LILITH is the artist duo Elin Lundgren (b. 1973 in Stockholm, based in Linderöd and Malmö) and Petter Pettersson (b. 1972 in Kristinehamn, based in Linderöd and Malmö). The duo has worked together with visual and performing arts in various forms since 1999 and has exhibited their works both in Sweden and internationally, most recently at CHART 2025, Avesta Art, Södertälje Konsthall, Malmö Konstmuseum and Tomelilla Konsthall.
In 2007, the duo founded Lilith Performance Studio – a celebrated and independent arena for practical artistic research focused on newly produced large-scale performance works by invited artists from around the world.