We might live in an age of “content creators,” but not all content created is equal. There are ever-growing formats and platforms with which to tell stories in an age when “I post, therefore I am” often seems to have trumped René Descartes’s dictum “cogito, ergo sum.” Two women keeping the French philosopher’s “I think, therefore I am” creed alive are photographer Frida Vega Salomonsson and art critic and curator Nora Arrhenius Hagdahl, the coeditors in chief and co-creative directors of Nuda, a Swedish culture and fashion magazine that takes many forms (exhibitions and brand consultancies, included), beyond the hardbound Nuda paper.
Based in a Stockholm neighborhood known colloquially as “Siberia” (so called because it’s a bit outside the central city), the co-founders work out of a basement space that is accessed via an anonymous storefront, down a flight of stairs, and through a heavy metal door. Past a white-walled and concrete-floored gallery space is the duo’s lair. It was once a porn-recording studio, Nora points out with a wicked bit of glee, and from the art on display to a bed nook with silver metallic linens and draperies from Magniberg, a beloved local homewear brand, the place exudes a flirtatious sex positive vibe.
The moniker “Nuda” seems to serve the same function. “We tried to come up with something that wouldn’t mean anything, but was flirting with something kind of feminine and nude and fleshy and nice” says Frida. “It’s young girls being into the provocative,” concludes Nora. By this she references the origins of Nuda, which grew out of high school friendships and shared interests.
Like a living organism, the project has morphed and evolved alongside its founders. The friends’ connection traces back to their teenage years. “I think Nora and I really found each other in high school; we were two people who were just, like, let’s just make something happen.” One of their earliest efforts was to organize a fashion and culture exhibition (where, by the way, Zak Arogundade, better known as Ecco2K, sold pieces from his first labeled fashion venture Alaska). Feminist seminars were also part of the repertoire. “When Nuda started,” says Nora, “the idea was that we really wanted to create a girl collective. It was also very much in that era of…2015. There was a girl boss moment going on in the world and we were really young and girl bosses.”
Frida was part of the first wave of Swedish bloggers, she clarifies that she “was more in the hipster blogging girl lifestyle” than she was in fashion. At that time, she continued, “you shot stuff and you posted it on your blog, but then when you wanted to take that next step of having someone take you seriously or produce something, there weren’t that many spaces…. When you’re that young, it’s difficult to get a platform. If you produce something or you shoot something, you always had to pitch it to someone that was older than you. Nuda was girls doing something together and publishing or creating whatever we wanted.”
Frida describes early Nuda, as being “like a kid’s book,” meaning that it was about images. The plan to follow a biannual schedule, matching fashion’s, quickly fell by the wayside. “We made a very conscious decision that we’re very much a lifestyle brand—not that we’re selling a lifestyle, but that it follows our life— and we wanted the books to be fun to make,” says Nora. The year 2018 marked a turning point; it’s when the duo decided to create themed issues.
Past themes have included Mother, Beyond (about spirituality), Munchies (“about eating and being eaten”), Terra, and Ego. The recent September issue was dubbed Saga. In Swedish saga means fairytale, but there’s nothing sugar-sweet to be found in its 360 pages, of which the creators wrote: “As reality become increasingly gray and marked by conflict and destruction we yearn for an illusory existence in which we’re not already fucked. Nuda:Saga examines the appeal, potential, and downsides of the fictitious alongside today’s most exciting artists, photographers, researchers, and cultural journalists.”
While Nuda is part of a Stockholm-Berlin-Brooklyn axis of cool, there are plenty of unexpected appearances and match-ups. In the new issue, Nora speaks with archaeologist and academic Bo Gräslund about alternative readings of Beowolf. Lordi—a Finnish band whose members dress like monsters and who swept to victory at the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest with “Hard Rock Hallelujah”—also turns up, as does DJ Steve Aoki, Acne Studios, and the indie label Ottolinger.
Names aside, this issue addresses one of the core issues we deal with everyday: storytelling. It asks where the line is between truth and lies, and explores subjects related, like conspiracy theories, and unrelated, like the local furry community, which gathers at Nordic Fuzz Con. “For both of us,” says Nora, “it’s a way to get in depth [in] very disparate areas and fields…. It’s also so fun to just learn. Nuda mirrors what interests we have, and not all our interests are fashion editorials. Curiosity is really one of the values that we are driven by. It’s really important for us to do something thoroughly and with some seriousness, but also some wit.”
Lately there’s been a lot of interest in stories that expand narratives around women. When I asked Nora if she and Frida think of Nuda as a tale of two women, she had this to say: “I think we thought about that a lot in the beginning; when we started it was about trying to make a space for ourselves. But at this point we’ve been locked in our basement for many years and we don’t really look at what we create in terms of our gender and the gender of other people working in the field. We don’t have a big mission in that sense, we just really believe in what we do and live with the desire to continue to do so. Also, since Frida and I mostly work with each other we’re not that exposed to how gender affects you in the business, and I think that was a quite conscious move from both of us. Like with Saga—we’re big on hiding from reality and want to create our own spaces and realities.”
The bonus is that through Nuda, they offer the rest of us a peek into their special universe. Through the “door” of its cover one can listen in on conversations about subjects familiar and not, and take time over—or page quickly past— imagery that doesn’t conform to templates or “taste.” In a way, Nuda is still a bit like a children’s book, albeit filled with adult content, in that its purpose is to spin tales, through art, through data, fiction, and facts, around a particular subject. One of the things that Nora has taken away from making Saga with Frida is this: “There is this freedom that comes with admitting it’s all stories. For me, it makes the world and reality more sparkling and imaginative [by] admitting that it’s all about interpretation.”
