The exhibition Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom featured textile works by Elsa Pärs-Berglund exhibited in dialogue with contemporary artists Shabnam Faraee and Josefin Gäfvert.

Elsa Pärs-Berglund’s practice spans more than six decades. Her work was characterised by constant curiosity and eagerness to change her artistic expression through technique and subject matter. Using a personal approach she utilised weaving’s ability to portray sociocritical motifs, thereby renewing the political image of satire. Pärs-Berglund depicts the political beside the private, without prioritising one or the other. Class critique, environmental awareness and a strong sense of equality and justice for marginalised groups in society make her artistic undertaking highly relevant today. In the exhibition Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom Pärs-Berglund’s works are presented together with contemporary artists Shabnam Faree and Josefin Gäfvert to emphasise her relevance to current times, both technically and thematically. The exhibition is the first large retrospective of Elsa Pärs-Berglund since she passed away in 2005 and reintroduces her engaging and unconventional body of work.

The post-war period in Sweden was shaped by post-colonial independence movements in the global South, while the Cold War’s Iron Curtain between the West and the East was cemented. Elsa Pärs-Berglund said that her political consciousness was awakened in connection with the protests against the Vietnam War and the various resistance movements that erupted against the dictatorships in Spain and Greece. The threat of nuclear weapons loomed over her time and its dangers to the planet. Her artistic debut did not occur until the 1970s when the architectural historian Elias Cornell presented her as "a radical weaver on Hisingen" in the magazine Folket i Bild / Kulturfront.

The exhibition title Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom takes its name from a double weave from 1975. The graphic motif consists of red-and-white undulating waves with numbers running along the length from one to 99. In the artwork's title, Pärs-Berglund refers to Chairman Mao Zedong's famous words "let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend" from 1956-1957. This policy invited criticism of the regime at a time when the country was considered politically stagnant. The hundred flowers' ideological promise quickly withered when critics were labelled as right-wing partisans and imprisoned in labour camps. It is also said that the policy was a diversionary tactic to expose and persecute critical voices.

In the 1970s, Mao Zedong's dictatorship did not affect the positive image of China among the far left. "Let a hundred flowers bloom" remained alive in the left-progressive consciousness in Sweden during the decade, for example in the form of the humorous distortion "Let a hundred pansies bloom!" during the 1978 gay liberation week in Stockholm. During the 1970s, the expression was used within the cultural left movement in Sweden, however, at the end of the decade, the romanticised image of Mao's China began to crumble, finally collapsing completely with the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

In dialogue with Elsa Pärs-Berglund’s works, two contemporary artists were featured. By Shabnam Faraee the hand-knotted rug Seven Kinds of Flowers, connected to Pärs-Berglund’s later works. It pays homage to the biological diversity of the Swedish landscape and takes us on a journey through the rich craft traditions of Iran. By Josefin Gäfvert five works were exhibited. Just like Pärs-Berglund, Gäfvert experiments with the art of weaving and its unique aesthetic expression, approaching the image of the historical 70s weaver with great humor.