Jens Assur I Can See the World from Here
Jens Assur and Färgfabriken present the exhibition I Can See the World from Here, a collaboration between Umeå University, Studio Jens Assur, BildMuseet at Umeå University and Färgfabriken.
In the center is a suite of photos by the photographer Jens Assur, who for a few weeks actually lived in a student room in Umeå. He has interacted with students, professors and researchers. He has seen the agony before exams and the joy in the pub afterwards. He has seen professors in long dresses and penguin-clad dinners, he has seen fabulous dinners next to fries and thawed hamburgers. In short, he has seen student life in Umeå. A university that wants to. Who wants by not wanting to be special, but to be everything. And which has every chance of becoming Sweden’s key to the future.
About the artist
Jens Assur (born 1970) is a photographer and filmmaker with a number of different projects behind him. His short film “The Last Dog in Rwanda” has recently been awarded prizes at the short film festivals in Palm Springs in the USA, Clermont-Ferrand in France and Flickerfest in Australia. “Jens Assur is perhaps our foremost documentary photographer today. Documentary photography usually means telling about a piece of reality via a photographic image. Instead of writing a text, you take a picture. But Jens Assur has always been more than that. Jens Assurs dares to trust that he does not need to tell. He does not need to convey a truth. He doesn’t need to reveal. He doesn’t have to say. He dares to trust that he captures images that say more than that by capturing something that gives the image its own strength, before or after the story. He dares to believe both in himself, in the image as a tool and in us as viewers.
That is why Jens Assur is Umeå University. It’s direct and it’s easy. It allows, examines and is complex. Without the slightest doubt. Without obligation. And that is why it is so important that everything is teleported to Stockholm and the Färgfabriken. Because we actually see the world through Jens Assur and Umeå University.”