In 2026 Åsa Dybwad Norman participated in the residency AIO CoLab – a laboratory that offers artists the opportunity to try out new methods for collective and co-creative artistic processes where shared thoughts, stories and experiences become a creative driving force.

In the exhibition Livsmedel/Food, new works by Åsa Dybwad Norman are shown, such as textiles, sculpture, installation and video, which she has developed in a co-creative artistic process with a group of young people working on on the project as their summer job. The exhibition is based on the dairy’s historical legacy of workers and women and the traces left by the development and dismantling of industrialization. What stories are hidden in the walls of a disused dairy?
  
Sannarps Mejeri in Årstad, which was eventually converted into a warehouse for cheese production, is not just a physical place. It is also an important cultural heritage that has left its mark on our time. Around the turn of the last century, there were over forty active dairies in the municipality of Falkenberg. Today, almost all of these farm dairies have been closed down, merged and centralized into large groups. Milking and dairying were traditionally women’s occupations for much of history. During industrialization in the 20th century, work became more mechanized and formalized. Many tasks previously performed by women then became a male and mechanical domain. 

Even today, we are facing major changes in production and work patterns that reflect contemporary power hierarchies and socio-political trends. What happens when the embodied knowledge in food production disappears? How can collective artistic processes bring to life the memories and experiences that are woven into our historical spaces? 

Årstads mycket tillfälliga konsthall is run by Leif Haglund 
and Ulla Sundin Beck and is based in the 100-year-old dairy building Sannarps Mejeri in Årstad, with impacts all over the Halland countryside

Documentation overview: