The Stockholm-born artist and food historian discusses her love for epicurean-inspired sculpture.
Known for her great sense of personal style and gorgeous hairdos, along with a quick wit and an immense appetite for literature, Charlotte Birnbaum is effervescent. Often smiling, her arms stretch out to you, reaching for a hug, or to kiss you on the cheek.
We meet in Stockholm, where she was born and raised before spending much of her adult life in Frankfurt and New York. Today, she splits her time between Sweden's capital and London, but clearly still has a great deal of affection for her hometown. It's here that her next major exhibition is set to open in a gallery run by Eva Livijn, yet Birnbaum admits she is still getting used to being tagged as an artist. "Actually, I still wonder if that’s what I am," she reflects. "In recent years my creations have been shown in galleries and even museums, so I am getting used to being called one."
Elisabet, 2018, Charlotte Birnbaum. Photo: Thomas Rydin
Charlotte Birnbaum's plateaux on display at the London House of Modernity. Photo: Thomas Rydin
The Yellow Dolphin, Charlotte Birnbaum. Photo: Thomas Rydin
She certainly never planned to become an artist. In fact, her professional background is in the history of gastronomy. "I am a member of the Swedish Gastronomic Academy and have written many books on extravagant meals and lavish banquets," she declares proudly. "During the last decade, I edited a series of books called On the Table, published by Sternberg Press… In a way the history of the dinner table is the starting point for everything I do."
Birnbaum’s books cover everything from napkins to pâtés and sugar sculptures, and this broad sweep of writing and research is what led her to create her own art. "I make sculpture," she says when asked to describe her works. "They are contemporary sculptures for the table but are also reminiscent of long-forgotten culinary traditions."
The echoes of history come from Birnbaum's use of upcycling and recycling knick-knacks that she picks up on her visits to secondhand sellers. "I write in the morning and in the afternoon and during weekends I look for material at flea markets and antique markets. I create my Plateaux [series of works] using old things that I buy at places like that. They are based on recycling or upcycling. There are so many beautiful things out there, I want to give them back their dignity. I assemble them on my little terrace in Marylebone - old things in new combinations."
The sculptures are incredibly fun, with an inherent sense of playfulness, something which Birnbaum credits to the objects themselves. "For many years my key source of inspiration was cookbooks. I just kept reading them," she says. "Now that I produce my sculptural works I feel really inspired when I find an exceptional object."
Photo: Thomas Rydin
Birnbaum's process begins with the individual object. A fragment of glass or something old and slightly broken becomes the point of departure for her creative journey. She combines and layers different objects until she feels something special has come to fruition. "The emergence of true beauty is difficult to plan," she says, as her eyes sparkle. "Suddenly, it happens."
She also finds great inspiration in chefs, seeing pastry chefs in particular as artists. She reveres the legendary Antonin Carême, calling the master chef "an architect working with sweet stuff" and explaining that she's far from the first visual artist to be inspired by him - or by food. "Andy Warhol’s lovely book Wild Raspberries is an homage to Carême; another amazing book on food by an artist is Salvador Dali’s surreal Les Diners de Gala."
Photo: Thomas Rydin
Unsurprisingly, Birnbaum says she finds harmony, not just inspiration, at the dinner table, with calve's liver and a glass of good red wine a favourite combination. "Actually, I eat almost everything," she says. "Good food and wine with friends and family is what make me happy and peaceful."
Such conviviality and the joy to be found in good food comes through in her work - art that has made it to a number of major exhibitions in recent years. She highlights an exhibition she presented a few years ago at the Hallwylska Museum in Stockholm, a space she says is one of her favourite places to spend an afternoon in.
Her next big project is an upcoming exhibition in the home/gallery of art advisor Eva Livijn in central Stockholm. "Eva puts on some the best shows in Stockholm at the moment and she is also one of my favourite people," says Birnbaum, returning to a familiar theme of friends and fun. "She makes the Swedish art world so much more fun!"
The Theatre of The Dining Table, curated by Andreas T Olsson, opened the 10 December 2021 and is on view until the 27th of January 2022. For more information contact eva@futuragallery.se