This year, the Edstrand Scholarship Foundation has awarded a grant of 500,000 SEK each to the artists Melanie Kitti, Sandra Mujinga, and Matti Sumari. In addition, four recent Master’s graduates from the Malmö Art Academy will each receive a grant of 125,000 SEK. This year, the grant is awarded to Julia Karla, Maya Krtić, Fredrika Lindeberg, and Sturla Magnússon.
About this year’s main grant recipients
Melanie Kitti
Melanie Kitti (b. 1986 in Umeå) is a visual artist and writer. In her practice, she moves between painting, sculpture, and text. She studied at the art academies in Oslo and Copenhagen, as well as at Forfatterskolen in Copenhagen. Kitti has exhibited at venues including Moderna Museet in Stockholm, O-Overgaden in Copenhagen, the National Museum in Oslo, Damien & The Love Guru in Zurich/Brussels, and Signal Center for Contemporary Art in Malmö. She made her debut with the poetry collection *Half Urn, Half Grail* published by Gyldendal in Denmark in 2022 and by Ellerströms in Sweden in 2025. She co-founded the journal Abhivyakti (2021–2024) as well as the artist-run exhibition space Destiny’s in Oslo (2016–2022).
Melanie views the grant as a significant recognition and an encouragement to continue working with the themes, materials, and techniques that have occupied her for quite some time. “As an artist, you’re often quite alone in the process, which is why it feels meaningful that someone from the outside sees value in the work and wants to support it. It gives me both self-confidence and a sense of trust in what I do. I feel very surprised, grateful, and honored to receive the grant.”
She believes the Edstrand Grant will impact her artistic practice by providing greater peace of mind and the opportunity to deepen her practice. “From November to May, I will be in Paris for six months, and the grant means a lot in that situation. It provides me with financial stability for a period, which is especially important since I also have a small child. Being able to feel less financial pressure for a while makes a big difference, both practically and mentally.”
Sandra Mujinga
Sandra Mujinga (b. 1989 in Goma) is an artist and musician based in Oslo. Sandra holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the Malmö Art Academy and graduated in 2015. Her work encompasses installation, sculpture, performance, text, and digital media. Through these mediums, she explores visibility and the hidden, self-representation, and surveillance politics. Her art addresses what is visible as traces and what is concealed, what haunts us or slips away, and through this, how the body remembers. She often works with beings that are fossilized, as well as ghostly entities from the future without a fixed identity. Mujinga is inspired by science fiction, Afrofuturism, and posthuman theory. She conjures alternative worlds where technology, humans, and animals blend in speculative becoming.
In 2021, she was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie and has had solo exhibitions at, among others, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (Skin to Skin) in 2025, Hamburger Bahnhof (IBMSWR) in 2022, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (Flo) in 2023. Skin to Skin was also shown at Den Frie Museum of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen in 2025. She participated in GIBCA (Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art) in 2023 and is currently featured in several group exhibitions around the world in 2026.
When asked what the Edstrand Scholarship means to her, Sandra replies, “This is a scholarship I’ve been following ever since I attended the Malmö Art Academy. It is a great honor to be included among the group of artists who have received it.” The grant will help her continue to build a solid foundation for her artistic practice.
Matti Sumari
Matti Sumari (b. 1987, Finland) lives and works in Malmö and earned an MFA from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in 2014. He is a co-founder of Alta Art Space, an artist-run exhibition space in Malmö established in 2015. Sumari works in a defunct ketchup factory on the outskirts of Malmö, a post-industrial landscape where materials are often sourced from the neighborhoods surrounding the studio. His work explores the resources that can be extracted from urban environments—waste materials, byproducts of contemporary life—which, through the city’s metabolism, are sorted into landfills. The ingredients collected are usually already, having served their previous functions, involuntary social sculptures. Sumari immerses himself in the creative process by hammering, bending, casting, and welding. He reworks the materials to create sculptures in varying dimensions, from monumental to minimal forms, that both adorn and blend into their built or natural environments. In a way, the works are never without history; they bear the traces of their past lives.
Matti describes receiving the grant as an incredible honor—“I am incredibly happy and it feels like a wonderful recognition after all these years of work.” He sees it as an opportunity to delve even deeper into his interests and gain the time and opportunity to explore new materials and techniques. Another opportunity the grant provides him is the ability to travel and conduct more research for upcoming projects.
About the Edstrand Foundation Grant
In total, the Edstrand Foundation awards 1,900,000 SEK, making it one of the largest grant funds for visual arts in Sweden. The foundation has been awarding the grants since 1951, and since the founding of the Malmö Art Academy in 1995. Many of the most prominent artists working in Sweden and the Nordic region have received the grant. They have described the significance of receiving the grant early in their careers. Since 2011, the Malmö Art Academy has been responsible for the grant exhibition.
Exhibition and Scholarship Award Ceremony
The scholarship recipients will exhibit their works from 22 October through 22 November at Malmö Art Academy’s galleries KHM1, Friisgatan 15b, and KHM 2, Bergsgatan 29 in Malmö. The exhibition is open Wednesday–Friday from 12:00 to 18:00 and Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 to 16:00
The scholarship award ceremony will take place on 22 October at 18:00 PM in the KHM1 gallery; opening hours that evening are 17:00 to 19:00. You are warmly welcome!
Contact
Gertrud Sandqvist
Chair of the Edstrandskas Advisory Board and Professor of Art Theory and History of Ideas
gertrud [dot] sandqvist [at] khm [dot] lu [dot] se (gertrud[dot]sandqvist[at]khm[dot]lu[dot]se)
For high-resolution press photos, contact Amanda Pettersson, Communications Officer at the Malmö Art Academy.
amanda [dot] pettersson [at] thm [dot] lu [dot] se (amanda[dot]pettersson[at]thm[dot]lu[dot]se)