© Sture Johannesson

By Ana Vukadin
The exposé-style installation by Sture Johannesson in his chilling “A Cut in the Groin” (2009) documents through letters, newspaper cut-outs, photographs and an orphanage’s keys, Sweden’s horrific state-sponsored sterilizations carried out to “purify the race.” They’re all strategies that manifest distrust in the government as an institution, but are embedded in the specific social context that produced them. It’s a paradox embodied in the chaotic display here, in which image balances ephemera and the unconscious.