www.sturejohannesson.com — © Aryan Kaganof. #12

Sture Johannesson’s radical art has made him an outcast in Sweden. Can his comeback exhibition rehabilitate him?

Sture Johannesson grips his cigarette tightly and draws from it as if it’s his last drag. The cigarette is tiny in his massive hand; smoke curls up and spirals into the end of his snow-white, pig-tailed hair, drawn back tightly from a forehead deeply creased with lines of concentration.
  My camera is running; I’ve got a tight frame that has tilted from the cigarette up to his face and back again for over four minutes of painful silence. I’ve asked him about his years in a Swedish state orphanage — years that fuelled his passionately anti-establishmentarian approach to art, but also years that taught him to rock the boat with great subtlety and humour.