September 12, 2026

Jesper Bror Palmqvist: The Other Side of the Map

Yul Cho, Lois Ding & Ruoxi Gao in Conversations with Jesper Bror Palmqvist

Jesper Bror Palmqvist is a Stockholm-based artist working across painting, film, installation and sculpture. In recent years, he has been working with maps, painting over them in vibrant colours and bringing together elements from folklore, different cultural traditions and his own life.

When we met at the studio MAAPS shares in Södermalm, he pulled up images of his paintings on his laptop and began taking us through the map series. We started with Dalarna, where Jesper grew up, and dalamåleri, Dalarna’s decorative folk painting tradition he once found boring.
 

JESPER: These are very old paintings Dalarna painters would make. They were going to people’s houses and asking if they could stay if they painted the house. So there are a lot of cottages with these paintings inside. They painted everything – every wall, every piece of trim. It’s everywhere in Dalarna still today: on porcelain, on clothing. It’s still such a big thing because it’s an old national treasure.

When I grew up, I thought this was so boring. I didn’t like it at all because, for me, it was connected to conservative, nationalistic thinking. I was connecting it to something I didn’t feel I fit into. And it’s always these strong narratives – you can really see storytelling, and almost every time, Christian stories. It was developed as a style during the 1700s. 

My mom was born in India and was adopted when she was eight. She had a not-so-normative adoption because she was eight years old and had her brother with her, and they were adopted by the same family. She had contact with the orphanage and her mother, and she came back four years after the adoption to spend time with her mom and meet everyone. So we have always been in contact with everyone. It’s been like an open adoption, but not really. It’s very special.

I’ve always had a very special relationship with India because it’s very distant from me, but at the same time, it’s always been there, and I’ve been very interested in it. So when I studied art, I was looking more into traditional miniature painting from India. I was thinking about the similarities between folklore paintings from Dalarna and sometimes connections to things are so mysterious – like, how can it be so similar? Is it just me, or is it a thing that folklore styles all over the world are similar? But I think Dala painting and Indian painting are so similar in their decorative aspects, colour, and strong storytelling.

So, I had a walk in the forest in Dalarna, and I found a map in an old, abandoned cabin. I was like, “What is this magical parchment thing?” So I brought it home and had it on the wall for years in my studio. Then I decided to paint on the back side. I mixed the styles. I also had a dream where my biological grandfather smoked a midsummer pole, and I woke up and was like, “This is so weird. I have to paint it.” So it’s a mix between so many different things. And yeah, it’s a self-portrait at the same time, I guess, because I’m mixed.

I think it’s very interesting with a map as well, because maybe you’ve seen the new map that was just set in stone by the UN? It’s so crazy that this is happening now.
 

YUL: I’d heard about it – the UN is now officially encouraging people to start using a new world map, which shows the continents in more accurate proportions. The old map makes Africa look much smaller and Europe and North America much bigger than they really are. 

RUOXI: We never think the map could be wrong. It just feels like the truth, so we don’t really question what it’s showing us. 

JESPER:  Yeah. It’s been this old map for ages, and this is happening now. It’s crazy because we’ve seen all these world maps in school and been taught, “This is the world.” A map is such a clear way to see the world. It’s supposedly the truth. But it’s changing, and the borders are changing. The world is filled with magic; everything is connected to each other in mysterious ways. So I was very interested in that thing with a map – it doesn’t have to be static. 

I wanted to explore the backside of a map. It’s my symbolic thinking to explore the back side of a map. I was experimenting, and it turned out like this. I was also thinking about Scandinavian minimalistic styles that I was so tired of. I wanted to do the opposite. 

There is a poem on the back side of this painting. This is the map that I painted over as well, and it’s a poem by Yahya Hassan called SKRUVSTÄD. This painting was in my solo exhibition, Who Told You the Story at HAS – Helix Art Space. 

This poem is about the binary system. He’s talking about being stuck between two power structures and trying to get out of it. So for me, the whole painting is about this binary system and how difficult it is to think outside of it. We are so indoctrinated in black and white, light, dark, up, down – everything is binary. Man, woman. You cannot be many things at once. I think it’s very interesting how we view undefined identities in our society because we try to categorise them to fit into the binary system. I guess it’s a human thing to categorise to understand things, but sometimes we need to talk about it. We stick to old categories, and we get stuck in them. 

So, this is my second painting, and this map is showing transport routes in the world. I was so inspired by the movie Get Out. So this painting is called Get Out, and it says “get out” here in my mother’s mother tongue. For me, the painting shows the nationalistic symbols set on fire and how to get out. It’s a narrative for me, but people see different things because of their background. Symbols have different meanings. I’m very interested in that as well. 

Lois, you mentioned the Dala horse earlier. This is a troll. I wanted the title Troll because I think a troll is a very interesting mythological folklore character. There are theories that the troll is very similar to us, but at the same time, something is very different. Then suddenly, this mysterious relationship appears. I feel like it’s a human thing that we are so scared of what we don’t know. I think the troll is somehow capturing that in a way. But this is my take on the troll. All the parts are these mythological animals that I think are also symbols for places.

This is a painting about water. I was so crazy about hydro-feminism when I studied. I wanted to do something with that, but I never really succeeded, I thought. But then I found this map, and it’s an inverted map, a map for a fish. This is the world map, all the waters in one continent. I just think water is the perfect symbol for solidarity and that we are all connected. Also, how time travels – it’s the same water always. If I drink a glass of water here, it’s the same body of water as my biological grandma had in her body in India. We’re all connected. 

This painting is a map showing Sweden’s earth, or forest – how we cut down the trees. I know people have been arguing about this, that we have the same statistics as in the Amazon. We cut down so many trees at a level as high as they do in the Amazon. We have a picture of Sweden as so beautiful, with so many forests, but we are selling it out. 

This is a shield – we have a shield for every landscape in Sweden. I wanted to paint the shield, but the trees are cut down. 

Have you seen the painting with the tiger before? There’s an old image from World War II called En svensk tiger, because we didn’t take a stance during World War II, we were silent. In Swedish, tiger can mean both tiger and is silent. So it’s a play on words: A Swedish tiger also means that a Swede keeps silent.

This one is called Kurbits, and kurbits is a way of painting flowers. This is text in Odia, my mother’s old language, and it says, “You may not pick this flower.” I wanted it to feel poisonous or something. 

YUL: What are the dancing figures? 

JESPER: They’re small devils. They are trying to cut it down. For me, it makes sense. I always have these stories inside of me, a narrative when I paint, but everyone sees different stories. Usually, I do not write out these stories because I want people to have their own interpretation. But I always write the material, like what the map is showing, because there is a connection to the map. 

YUL: I think that’s also what’s interesting about the work. You bring together things from different cultures and histories without needing to explain exactly what each of them is or what they’re supposed to mean. I think that openness is one of the most powerful things about it. We often struggle with things that don’t fit into the categories we already have.

JESPER: Definitely. It’s so hard to just let them be what they are. It’s very much like that.

This painting is called Trickster. Trickster is a character in Nordic folklore, portrayed as a fox in a suit. It’s like the village psychopath that you cannot trust. So this is like the Joker, or the trickster, or the politician. I wanted this worshipping or self-destructive machinery thing, a dystopian feeling. It’s a big playing card at the same time. 

And this one is Theseus’ Castle. It’s based on the Ship of Theseus, an old Greek thought experiment. Have you heard about it? If you replace every part, piece by piece, is it still the same ship? I think it’s very interesting if you apply it to identities, and that’s what I wanted to do. This is a mix of architecture in the castle. And that’s the northern lights in the background. 

I used to look at iconographic pictures of Christian icons. The text in this painting is saying, “Then blooms,” and that is the beginning of a song that we sing during midsummer. This is the midsummer pole screwed down in his head. I don’t know; it’s about traditions, I guess – how we just do it and not reflect on why. It’s overgrown, and the crocodiles are coming. 

And this is called Sleep Paralysis. I wanted it to feel like... is the elephant there to scare, or is it there for shelter? I wanted it to be ambivalent in that way. I just think the elephant is so interesting because it’s so used everywhere. It’s such a symbol. It’s almost not an animal anymore. It’s such a symbol of human cruelness. 

YUL: I’m interested in how all these different references come together in the paintings. And especially the fact that you paint on the back of the maps. When we look at them physically, I find it powerful that you’re painting on the reverse of something that presents a particular way of seeing the world, and using it to complicate ideas of identity and nationality. The hidden side of the map makes that even more interesting. 

JESPER: I’m very interested in that because I’m a teacher as well. We are so sure of what we are teaching, but we cannot be so sure – everything is changing all the time. I really wanted that in-betweenness in everything, and how to use modern paint and colours but still feel like these old traditions. 

I also have a saying in every painting, like a hidden message. You might feel it. Sometimes I get feedback that the work is too political, or that it would be better to just mix the Indian and Dalarna folklore without the more political messages. But I think it’s important that artists are political, especially these days, and that this is also a form of art. Marching pictures – that is an art form. I just don’t think people talk about that kind of art enough; it’s not always seen as a real art form. I wanted to have that aspect in my work as well. It should be packed with as many things as possible. I just want to max it up. I’m a maximalist, I guess. 

YUL: But what would it mean for your paintings to be unpolitical? Even if you were simply mixing these different images and references, the act of putting them together is already saying something. What does it mean to create this kind of hybrid? There’s something political in that itself. 

LOIS: When I came here to study contemporary art, I noticed a change. Around 2014, there was a lot of interest in Ai Weiwei, especially his work criticising the Chinese government. Now it feels more like, “Why don’t we just not talk about that? Let art be art.” To me, that says something about the art scene today. People seem more hesitant to use their voice. 

JESPER: It’s a very special climate these days, in the art scene. It feels like people are so afraid of using their voice. I think it’s very interesting that you say that. I feel the same – it used to be different. 

YUL: Maybe people have never stopped being interested in political art. They just don’t want the criticism directed at themselves. It’s easy to say, “China has an authoritarian government, and we’re a democratic country, so we can criticise that.” Ai Weiwei is a good example. But when it comes to questioning what Swedishness means, or what’s wrong with Swedish society, it becomes uncomfortable. Even if it’s just motifs that can be read in different ways. 

I think that also says something about what kinds of political art are acceptable to institutions and the art market in the West. Some criticism is easier to embrace because it fits a story people already agree with, without asking them to question themselves. 

JESPER: Very interesting. It’s always this thing about being silent all the time. 

LOIS: And maybe just one last question, about the material side of the paintings. I really like the combination of the blue and orange, and how vibrant the colours are. What do you use to get them so bright? Is it a particular kind of paint or material? 

JESPER: It’s all vinyl paint, and it’s UV – it starts to glow during dawn. That’s why I use these colours. This is orange. I like this one also, it works. This one was my first. I found this paint, and I was like, “This is so fiery.” I really want to do something with this. I use it in every one. 

YUL: I think it’s also become part of your identity as an artist. There’s something very vibrant and camp about the work, and I really like how you bring Swedish and Indian folk motifs into that language. There’s also something very queer about the way you approach these traditions, and I think that gives you an interesting way of telling your own stories. 

JESPER: Oh, that makes me so happy. I still have maps in my studio, so I will do like 10 more, I think. But then I think the project is done, and I need to do something else. Before I did this, I used to work with drawing. I did very detailed drawings, but I got so tired of that. So I wanted to do something big and colourful. But I cannot do one thing forever.