Artist and Director Alexander Wessely Bends Reality with Sound and Stage

For the Swedish artist and director Alexander Wessely, creation has always been a form of survival—a way to process, reflect, and push boundaries. From his teenage years painting graffiti on Stockholm’s streets to studying photography and apprenticing with marble sculptors in rural Greece, Wessely’s practice has long been driven by dualities: the tangible and the digital, chaos and calm, pop culture and fine art. His creative language, forged through years of experimentation in photography, sculpture, and scenography, has made him one of today’s most sought-after visual collaborators in music.

Wessely’s journey into the world of performance and stage design evolved naturally from a fascination with light and human emotion. Early projects with Avicii, Rihanna, and Swedish House Mafia allowed him to blur the boundaries between image, architecture, and sound—approaching each concept not through a medium, but through an idea. 

“It’s about the idea in mind, then choosing the medium after,” he said. That philosophy reaches a powerful crescendo in his most recent work: the creative direction, scenography, and visual storytelling for “After Hours Til Dawn”—the North American tour for Abel Tesfaye, known globally as The Weeknd.

Collaborating closely with Tesfaye, and creative director Lamar Taylor, Wessely helped craft an operatic world of light, decay, and rebirth—one that transforms stadium-scale pop into something deeply psychological. Whitewall spoke with Wessely about building that world, the emotional core behind the show’s haunting imagery, and how balancing imagination and reality continues to shape his evolving practice.

Alexander Wessely From Graffiti to Total World-Building

WHITEWALL: You’re known as someone who can blur boundaries and shape narratives in an array of mediums. How did you get your start?

ALEXANDER WESSELY: The journey started when I was quite young. I always had a hard time fitting in and focusing. My release was always creative. Around ten years old, I started doing graffiti in Sweden. That was my escape. I could do things and see responses in real time; I didn’t have to wait. That wasn’t optimal with school, so I basically stopped going. When it was time to graduate, I didn’t have enough points, and my mother was nagging a principal at a media school outside of Stockholm to give me a chance. They accepted me, and I got offered graphic design, photography, or film to focus on. I chose photography. I fell in love with the art form fast. I fell in love with the camera as a tool to express myself. It was a natural progression, from my days of doing graffiti. Pushing a button was even faster; I could get a real-time response. It was fantastic.

WW: Then, you got into fashion photography. How did that shape your work?

AW: There, I got introduced to the power of lighting—how you can sculpt your subject with light. I realized, “This is what I want to do.” It clicked, and it was interesting with Photoshop and digital manipulation. I never left, in a way. 

“Music has always been a driving force and a huge source of inspiration,”

-Alexander Wessely

WW: How did that lead you into working in the music industry?

AW: Music has always been a driving force and a huge source of inspiration. I always listen to music when creating, so I started seeking out musicians to collaborate with to blend this interest and inspiration with my storytelling. 

16 or so years ago, my girlfriend at the time, wife now, was traveling to Los Angeles and I started meeting agencies and labels. A lot of shooting for free, trying to build a portfolio… We went back and forth for about three years. I was basically working for free in a studio in Stockholm and my wife was working at a café, supporting these trips. The third year, I had a breakdown. I felt a lot of pressure and had a lot of anxiety. Outside of a Wal-Mart, I fell to the ground and passed out. I was sure I had a heart attack. It turns out I had a panic attack. I felt like the whole world around me was crumbling, that I was letting everyone down. I decided to stop the mission and that we should go back to Sweden—live a regular life with a regular job. 

About two weeks later, I got an email that was sent months and months and months prior from No ID—who was at Def Jam at the time, also Kanye’s mentor and very involved with Rihanna—and he was drawn to my photography. He wanted to meet. He introduced me to J. Cole and Big Sean and Common, among other people. Cole and Sean were new artists at the time, and he introduced me to the world of music at an early age. I felt, “I want to be here. I want to do this.” Shortly after, Avicii’s manager reached out, saying he saw my work on Instagram and asked if I wanted to work with Avicii. I said yes. 

During this journey, I got introduced to Rihanna, around 2014, and it was the first project I was asked to not do photography. I was asked to do more creative work in general—creative consultation, art direction; the world around it all. That was very interesting, to feel that there are other ways to go about my ideas. From the graffiti to the photography to this. This is basically me expressing my thoughts in a room with people. Around 2016, Swedish House Mafia reached out to me. Steve, one of the band members, who’s actually now the Godfather to my oldest daughter, said they were going to do a comeback and asked if I wanted to take a 360-degree grip on the brand. Live performance, artworks, music videos—the whole world. He basically said, “Do you want to do everything?” That was the first time I got a grasp on everything. That changed a lot of things for me. 

In that moment, I felt that I could approach a project without a medium in mind. It’s about the idea in mind, then choosing the medium after. Whether it’s an installation or photography or film or creative direction, I can choose that after the idea. It was very liberating for me.

Constructing a Psychological Landscape for the Stage

WW: In 2021, through Swedish House Mafia, you got introduced to The Weeknd. What was that beginning like?

AW: I directed the music video for the song Moth to a Flame that they did together, and I did the scenography and production design and creative direction for The Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia’s performance at Coachella in 2022. This led me to deepening my relationship with The Weeknd—especially his creative director, Lamar Taylor. We have a fantastic bond and a great relationship. That leads us to his latest North American tour.

WW: What was your conversation like with Abel about this tour? How did you go from this conversation to the concept and to what we see on stage? 

AW: The first conversation around this was that we are releasing a film, and it’s heavily influenced and based on personal experiences to him. One being him in a paralyzed state in a bathtub, about to drown. There was a lot of sharing around the memories and these ideas about his journey. Very personal. We tried to find ways to represent these thoughts and experiences without being too in your face. These inner reflections, self-doubt, questioning yourself in obscure ways—and how to come to a place where this can be translated to art. We have a scene in the show where it’s a pool of blood and we have Abel slowly sinking through it, almost as if he’s drowning. Then there are cloudy, abstract landscapes, and we have some sculptural representations of him—one being a figurative piece that we actually made in marble, as well, where parts of him are broken. His music is so impactful and recognizable and people are there to have a good time, but if you reflect and take it in, you’ll wonder, “What are we actually experiencing right now?” We wanted to create a journey that reflects the highs and lows of his life and career.

WW: In this show, there are a few returning pieces from its original tour—including Hajime Sorayama’s sculpture and the gold robot—but it’s now surrounded by a decaying landscape. Why did you want to bring back some of these elements and reimagine them in a new context?

AW: The city is a continuation of the work that Es Devlin did in 2022 or 2023. It’s a continuation of that glorious, larger-than-life city and production design, but now in this third act of Abel’s career when things are in decay. Things are chaotic. The whole city is bold but in pieces, which translates back to Abel and his career, in a way. It leaves a lot of things up to interpretation for people to figure out the hidden meanings. Soyarama is now covered in gold, being in the ultimate state of itself.  And all of this being encapsulated by a larger screen than before. 

We went deeper into reality versus digital. If you see the show straight on, things start to blend. At times, you can almost question what’s real and what’s practical. What’s physical or what’s screen. Seeing it from the side, with the built-out cross-shape runway, you almost have a non-digital experience. It’s practical and something else, and that makes it quite a unique show.  

“It leaves a lot of things up to interpretation for people to figure out the hidden meanings,”

-Alexander Wessely

WW: For those experiencing the show, what is something that you hope that they walk away thinking or feeling? What is a key message?

AW: It will be hard for a majority of the people to walk away from this without being overwhelmed with Abel’s performance and the music itself. At the end of the day, it’s very hard to compete with that. It’s so recognizable; it’s a huge part of a lot of people’s everyday lives. I hope people can feel that they went to a pop concert with one of the biggest artists in the world in a stadium, and it was mind-bending. It was, at times, a bit challenging. In the middle of all of this, having some time to reflect, too, because there are deeper and hidden meanings to everything that we do. We put a lot of time and effort into that—to not have it be a two-dimensional, one-sided thing. We really want challenge the audience to feel and at time experience this almost existential act, questioning, “What’s going on right now?” And then back to reality. 

When I was searching for meaning in what I do, this is one of the reasons I do this. I really want to push it, to challenge it, to contribute to the culture. I’m an advocate of emerging worlds—taking it from what you can put in a museum to a 200-foot LED screen in front of 60,000 people, and vice-versa. The feeling of being in control of your own path.