Annika Östman

Annika Östman‘s spatial story

I recently learned that I am a border-stalker. You may think this means I am some sort of wild trespasser, but it is a lot more profound than that. Border-stalkers are, in fact, people who live life at the edges of different identities and in the spaces between different geographies.

The concept comes from the Japanese American artist Makoto Fujimura, and when I heard of it, I knew that for the first time, I had heard a perfect definition of my life.

I was born in Geneva to Swedish parents, spent my childhood moving between Sweden and East Africa, went to boarding school in America, and graduated from university in Scotland. I have worked in London, Monrovia, Washington, and Uppsala before coming to work for Nordregio in Stockholm.

It has at times, been very difficult to move around this much and to continually start over, often in different cultures and languages. I have regularly felt that I don’t really belong in any one culture and struggled to answer simple questions like: “Where are you from?”

What truly resonates with me about Fujimura’s concept is that border-stalkers are credited with having the ability to “cross tribal norms.” I have found that the beauty of living in these spaces between different geographies is that you can more often see what connects us than what divides us.

I genuinely enjoy meeting new people and connecting people of different backgrounds. I guess it should, therefore, come as no surprise that I ended up working as a communicator, striving never to be bound by a place or a certain culture but thriving on interactions with people.