Diana K Vonna-Michell

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The Making of Ways of Being an Artist

This thesis examines contemporary artistic practices, gauging the role played by Conceptual art in shaping artist subjectivity and manifesting it in discourse. This process is understood as the relationship between three parameters: the social context of contemporary art, creativity specific to an artist's practice, and the relationship an artist has to themselves. The theoretical framework is tailored to analyse how artists produce subjectivities and how their practices generate specific forms of knowledge, or Ethopoetics. By tracing these parameters, this study interprets the situated singularity of the Finland-Swedish artist J.O. Mallander (b. 1944). Introducing the term the Artist-Subjectivation Process, a concept modified from Michel Foucault’s later thinking, the aim is to study the emergence of subjectivity in art discourse and art making. The expanded theoretical, methodological, and contextual framework is the result of this investigation and, therefore, also forms part of the study’s outcome, making this dissertation a twofold endeavour. The study traces artistic practices, strategies, and attitudes that constitute the Artist-Subjectivation Process through close reading of previously unresearched Swedish and Finnish archival sources. Shedding light on a period, an art phenomenon and an exchange that has not yet been sufficiently researched, it concludes that Mallander, through his creative practice, forged ways of being an artist through art networking, art enabling, spiritual art exploration, and the archiving of materials and memories. By systematising and challenging an artist-centred view of art, this thesis explores a new way to understand the creative process in an artist’s life and the fundamental questions of becoming an artist.