Simon Lezbedi

Disciplin: Fri konst

Stipendieår: 2026

Nominerande institution: Konstfack

Nomineringskommitté: Lina Selander, Professor Cecilia Grönberg, Professor Lisa Tan, Professor Thomas Elovsson Adj Professor Meriç Algün, Lektor Olivia Plender, Lektor

Stipendiestiftelse: Jubelfonden

In the documentation from Simon Lezbedi’s solo exhibition project for his Master’s thesis, entitled Windowlicker, we see a barber’s pole from the middle ages, which is when they came into being and when barbers were also town surgeons. It has the distinctive red and white diagonal stripes and is made out of turned wood in a technically highly skilled manner. On another wall, we see a series of black rhomboidal-shaped objects that resemble windows. These are slanted and made of tinted glass. Hung in a single row, the windows suggest speed and perhaps the passage of time. Such is life. Also in the gallery, is a charred wood fence flat on the ground, looking like a trap door—or is it a void? Finally, there are two tracksuit jackets casually hanging as the markers of a certain youth culture that they are. Maybe they are stand-ins for two buddies killing time on a Friday night. Simon Lezbedi has deconstructed the stripes of the barber pole. If you dismantle a barber’s pole and unfold the rotating red and white stripe, you get the shape that the rhombus. It’s a slant with sharp edges. Simon plays with this shape in different but specific ways that are inspired by things that happened to him. We may not know what happened at the barbershop on Ringvägen, or on Gotland year after year working for the famous couple, or who is in Iraq doing who-knows-what-now, or who is no longer here and never will be again. We might not know what it’s like to walk on the knife’s edge of existence, but in Windowlicker, we sense an eeriness of moving back and forth in time and place, very fast, and at a slant.