This exhibition is a tribute and a lament. It is an exhibition about a Malmö that is disappearing faster than it can be documented. It is an attempt to survive the real estate developers’ vision of “the new Malmö.” An attempt to preserve a city that is shrinking, about streets falling silent, about homes priced out of reach. A dialogue about power and urban transformation, about gentrification and loss. About a shared space that is no longer shared. About the corner store that disappears, the market trade that grows quiet, the pizzeriasthat shut down, and the housing that is built to make room for others than those who have lived there all their lives.

It is dedicated to everyone who remembers Sorgenfri when it still stretched to St. Knut, when Industrigatan was a place one only passed through. Everyone who remembers and lived in Möllan before anyone wanted to live there, when market stalls and people filled the square. Before the wine bars and before Massive. It is dedicated to everyone who made a home of Seved before anyone wanted to live there. It is dedicated to those who bought phone cards and bubblegum at Bagdad, who shopped at ICA on Bennetsväg and Babylon. Those who ate at Orient Grill and Kitchen Kings and gathered in the light of the kiosks’ shopwindows late at night. Those who were there when the protest marches stretched from the beginning to the end of Bergsgatan, when the demonstrations could be heard before they came into view.

But this is also an exhibition about grief. About barely having time to mourn a Malmö before it is taken from us. About constantly losing without being given the chance to hold on to what has been lost. About collective memory and who it includes. About memory as politics, power, and identity. About which histories

are written into the city’s future and who gets to help write them. Who gets to feel at home in the new Malmö, and who is turned into a stranger in their own city.

This exhibition wants to show the Malmö that has always been and that is my home city. With it, I want to remember the city together with all who have been and become a part of it. Those who have shaped their lives in the city and not around it. But this is also a wish and a reminder of resistance. Malmö has always been a city of grassroots movements, of organizing, of community beyond municipal decisions and corporate interests. Malmö has always been a city where people have come together to fight for their homes, their places, their lives. The struggle continues as long as we remember, even as the city changes.

– Ikram Abdulkadir