The goal of SUPERMARKET, the international artist-run art fair, is to provide a showcase for artist initiatives from all over the world and to create opportunities for new networks in the Swedish as well as the international art scene.

SUPERMARKET has been arranged since 2007 by a small group most of whom are artists themselves. Supermarket is a development of Minimarket, which was held at Konstnärshuset in February 2006 in reaction to the new commercial art fair Market.

Initiated and organised by artists, this project has rapidly evolved from a modest group of local initiatives to a full-fledged international art exposition that has made its mark and helped firmly establish Stockholm on the art world map.

SUPERMARKET started in small scale as MINIMARKET in 2006 in an art nouveau palace, the following year it became SUPERMARKET, with international presence in the same site, 2008 it moved to a run-down industrial space, then to a newly built designer first-class hotel (Clarion Hotel Stockholm) and 2010 to the very heart of Stockholm – Kulturhuset (House of Culture).

For SUPERMARKET 2011 we will build up De Zwarte Ruyter – Souvenir Shop. Here you will find an unlimited edition of all kinds of souvenirs.

In our DZR Souvenir Shop we will have a so called ‘kodak moment’ with a collection of different drop backgrounds, who men can choose out of to be photographed on. The backgrounds are made by and will represent the artists we worked with so far in a more serious and ironic way. Within the different backdrops we will invite the public to choose one for their picture, some attributes to hold and take their picture. They are free to take one picture as a memory, the whole collection of the portraits of the visitors we will print and publish during SUPERMARKET 2011 in a Zine.

By building up a souvenir shop we want to outline and question the borders of an artist initiative like we are; using the fact that most people have a prejudice on how those are working and should be presented. The same as tourists have a restricted view of the countries they are visiting.

To play with a commercial joke and disrupt the visitors by confusing impressions is our aim. At the same time it can be seen as a metaphor for the upset balance within the (underground) art scene, their commercial non-value and artistic value and between those artist -initiative -‘galleries‘ in opposite to the commercial ones. At least it is to be seen in the Netherlands even more with the raising of a strongly right wing government.

We want to enlist in the supermarket art fair 2011 by creating a similar space, an atmosphere, of what we are doing in Rotterdam: obtaining the facilities, people and dialogue required and start working.