In the exhibition Celestial Bodies, featuring numerous site-specific works, Diana Orving’s monumental textile sculptures encounter Carl Milles’s world of mythology, astronomy, and visionary heights. Carl Milles’s grand studio, populated by figures that seem to hover between heaven and earth, becomes a stage for a dialogue across time between materials and modes of expression. Just as Carl Milles allowed his works to rise toward the firmament, Orving’s sculptures occupy the space with a lightness that defies gravity. The textiles unfold in layers and flows—organic forms that may evoke cloudscapes, wind currents, moving vegetation, or the flight of bird flocks. Here, the cosmic and the corporeal converge: celestial bodies as both stars and symbols of humanity’s longing to transcend its limitations.
The title Celestial Bodies refers to Milles’s fascination with astronomy and the symbolic charge of placing art high above the ground, as if on the verge of leaving the earth. In Orving’s work, this perspective takes on a contemporary form: soft, porous textile structures that capture light and movement and embody both weightlessness and physical presence. The exhibition weaves together the elevation of myth, the infinity of the universe, and the bird’s free movement with the intimate, body-close nature of textiles. It invites visitors to wander between heaven and earth, between Carl Milles’s bronze and stone and Orving’s silk and linen—a meeting in which materials speak to one another and gravity seems, temporarily, to be suspended.
“We are proud to inaugurate &Milles with Diana Orving, as her artistic practice unites the corporeal and the cosmic in a way that naturally resonates with Carl Milles’s world. Her textile sculptures move between weight and lightness, between earth and sky—just like Milles’s works. Through Orving, we want to open the series with an artist who both carries the dialogue with history forward and brings something new to the site,” says Sara Källström, Museum Director and CEO, Millesgården Museum.
About Diana Orving
Diana Orving (b. 1985) is a Swedish artist based in Stockholm. She primarily works with textile sculpture and painting, exploring themes of memory, origin, and the subconscious, where the tactile meets the visual and the body’s relationship to space is central. While sculpture is often understood through its surface, Orving turns her attention inward — toward structure, flow, and movement, treating form almost as a living organism. Through seams that resemble veins or branching systems, she creates immersive environments that invite both physical and sensorial presence.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at, among other venues, Carvalho Gallery (New York), Tempesta Gallery (Milan), Art Brussels 2025, and the Singer Laren Museum (the Netherlands). In Sweden, her art has been shown at venues including Artipelag, Galleri Arnstedt (Båstad), the Gothenburg Museum of Art, the Textile Museum of Borås, Varberg Art Hall, and Nässjö Art Hall.
Photo: Märta Thisner