About

Irja Bodén’s ceramic sculptures feature stacked forms that are both embossed and layered, enhanced by a multi-colored thick glaze surface. She throw familiar vessels that are cut and assembled into new shapes. Bodén’s work has been exhibited in both solo and group shows at notable venues, including the Al Held Foundation and the Samuel Dorsky Museum. Recent exhibitions feature her work in The 74th A-ONE Exhibition at Silvermine Galleries, curated by Lisa Carlson, Senior Director of Jane Lombard Gallery, where she received the Mollie & Albert Jacobson Sculpture Award. She was also featured at BAU Gallery, curated by Mikiko Ino, director of KinoSato Art Center, and was awarded a two-person exhibit scheduled for 2025. Her work has appeared in various other venues, including Kin, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna, Sweden, the Hyde Collection, and the Immigrant Artist Biennial. She is the recipient of several awards, including the 2024 Puffin Foundation grant, the 2021 Artist Resource Trust Fund from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation in Massachusetts, and the 2017 Public Art Fellowship from the New York State Council on the Arts. Bodén earned her BFA from SUNY Potsdam. She is a member of the feminist cooperative gallery A.I.R. in Brooklyn, NY, and currently lives and maintains an active studio practice in the Hudson Valley.



Artist Statement

My sculptures combine stacked and nested ceramic forms embossed with texture and layered with thick glazes. Each piece begins on the wheel, where I transform raw clay into a narrative-based abstract sculptures. The interplay of shape, color, and texture reference the northern landscape along with other realms both physical and metaphysical – from subterranean depths to spiritual domains. The Arctic's vanishing ice sheets, melting glaciers, and thawing permafrost particularly inform my work, translating environmental urgency to tactile form.

Each piece blends place, memory, and loss, drawing from both personal narratives and universal experiences while challenging traditional boundaries between craft and fine art. My technical approach embraces diverse glazing and firing methods—underglaze, multiple glazes, smoke firing, and raku—creating complex surfaces that echo geological processes. I began my ceramic series “To Dress a Ptarmigan” in 2018, responding to the systematic destruction and relocation of my hometown in northern Sweden—a city being dismantled due to mining faults beneath its foundations. Situated above the Arctic Circle, Kiruna (Giron) takes its name from the Sami word for “Ptarmigan,” a resilient bird native to this northern region. The series title creates a deliberate parallel: just as dressing a bird for consumption requires careful dismembering and reassembling, so too does the piece-by-piece relocation of an entire city require a meticulous deconstruction of place and identity.

The series cultivates a profound dialogue with the land through several interconnected sub-series; Passage, Aurora, Ferrum, Oracle, Ort and the Earth Shell Series. Each explores facets of environmental fragility and human memory. Works titled "You're In My Heart," "Sorry To See You Go," "Condolences," "Will You Remember Me When You're Gone," and "You Danced for Us, We Dance Back" embody both personal grief and ecological mourning. Through form and surface, these pieces simultaneously acknowledge environmental crisis and honor resilience – ceramic testimonies to landscapes and communities at their breaking point.