Foto: Stewen Quigley
Christian Chambert is one of AICA’s most devoted members. Ever since 1975, for a full 48 years, he has been continuously active in various positions, both in the international AICA and its Swedish section.
In international AICA, Mr. Chambert has been vice president for a maximum of twelve years and has been a member and chairman of several committees since the 1980s. During his chairmanship of the statutes committee, the statutes and regulations were updated from scratch in 2016. As a treasurer, secretary and then chairman from 1978 – 2013, Mr. Chambert made AICA Sweden the third largest section after France and the USA.
Mr. Chambert has overseen several national and international roundtable discussions, specifically in collaboration with Kim Levin and the Swedish AICA's board, he conducted round table discussions in Frankfurt, Istanbul, Ljubljana, Luxembourg and Sarajevo.
A highlight was the AICA congress in Stockholm and Malmö in 1994 on the theme “Strategies for Survival – Now!” that included talks by Jimmie Durham, Thomas McEvilley, Ilya Kabakov, Julia Kristeva and Gerardo Mosquera among others. The congress resulted in an anthology with the same title and the book “Swedish Samples - A Conversation on Contemporary Art”, which introduced the current Swedish art scene.
Beside his deep involvement in AICA, Mr. Chambert has been a teacher at the Department of Art History at Uppsala University, where he introduced the course "Current visual art", which broadened the art field with alternative comics, graffiti, textile images and feminist aesthetics.
In 1977 he published the significant book ”Drömmen Verkligheten Upproret” [Dream Reality Insurrection] and has co-published many other books since then. Mr. Chambert is an industrious contributor to several international and Swedish art magazines. He has been writing art criticism in the newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning, in which he also has for decades tirelessly argued for a centrally located newly built art museum in his hometown of Uppsala.
AICA Sweden