Kunstkritikk

Summer Reading

Kunstkritikk returns on August 12. Until then, catch up on our coverage of the Nordic and European art scene, from the Venice Biennale to Greenland and beyond.

Antipopulist Front

In Vienna, Mumok’s new director Fatima Hellberg is quietly reshaping how we move through the museum. And how the museum moves through us.

Whales Are Not Singing Anymore

In Oslo, Cecilia Vicuña presents two monumental collective works about the struggle for life in the sea.

Ghost Projector

The past haunts the present through the apparatuses that make our images in Lap See Lam’s exhibition at Henie Onstad Art Center.

It Was a Different Time

SUPERFLEX’s rescue ark is not intended for humans alone. Yet it is laden with human products and critiques of capitalism – all dressed up as capitalism.

Her Name Is Legion

Vibeke Tandberg is not one of those artists who stopped experimenting with age.

The Jewel Box

Moderna Museet’s painting bonanza glitters, but leaves little room for sustained looking.

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Antipopulist Front

In Vienna, Mumok’s new director Fatima Hellberg is quietly reshaping how we move through the museum. And how the museum moves through us.

Whales Are Not Singing Anymore

In Oslo, Cecilia Vicuña presents two monumental collective works about the struggle for life in the sea.

Ghost Projector

The past haunts the present through the apparatuses that make our images in Lap See Lam’s exhibition at Henie Onstad Art Center.

The Saddest Show in Art History

A public event in Vilnius launching next year’s Baltic Triennial underscored the radical difference between being claimed by war and claiming detachment from it.

It Was a Different Time

SUPERFLEX’s rescue ark is not intended for humans alone. Yet it is laden with human products and critiques of capitalism – all dressed up as capitalism.

Tone Hansen Is the New Director of Moderna Museet

‘I take my position of power very seriously’.

Venice Under Pressure

Hope, spectacle and exhaustion at the 61st Biennale.

Too Much Hope

The main exhibition at the 61st Venice Biennale is a spiritualist séance with no spirits present.

A Time of Transition

Many of the pavilions at the 61st Venice Biennale manage to transcend the outdated structure of national representation.

Monsters On Guard

Transgressive creatures in the Nordic Pavilion.

Will Porn Save Us?

At the Danish Pavilion in Venice, the fertility crisis is displaced by an avalanche of sleek Scandinavian smut.

Pressure Mounts in Venice

Strong reactions from European leaders to Russia’s participation in this year’s biennial. Danish minister open to boicott.

Myths and Fables in the Nordic Pavilion

Tori Wrånes, Klara Kristalova, and Benjamin Orlow will exhibit together at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026.

Her Name Is Legion

Vibeke Tandberg is not one of those artists who stopped experimenting with age.

What Is an Image?

Curator and researcher Antonio Somaini thinks artists are essential for understanding what AI is doing to culture.

The Jewel Box

Moderna Museet’s painting bonanza glitters, but leaves little room for sustained looking.

A Scandinavian Prairie Wolf

Which memories do we preserve together, and which do we allow to fade into oblivion? It's in that murky space that the collective coyote operates.

Open Call

The Arts and Culture Magazine Publishers Forum announces an open call for a writer to join a research trip to Reykjavík.

Monsters On Guard

Transgressive creatures in the Nordic Pavilion.

Too Much Hope

The main exhibition at the 61st Venice Biennale is a spiritualist séance with no spirits present.

A Time of Transition

Many of the pavilions at the 61st Venice Biennale manage to transcend the outdated structure of national representation.

Will Porn Save Us?

At the Danish Pavilion in Venice, the fertility crisis is displaced by an avalanche of sleek Scandinavian smut.

Love Will Tear Us Apart

The Antwerp Six exhibition reveals fashion as a system and presents the dilemmas that all creatives face today.

Dubious Business

Nordic nostalgia and a fraught sponsorship collaboration at Market Art Fair in Stockholm.

Let’s Stay in Touch

What does it mean to be important in the art world? Marie Karlberg’s Stockholm show answers the question, one oversized business card at a time.

Body, Code, Desire

Madeleine Andersson, Arvida Byström, and Tobias Bradford on embodiment and identity in the age of AI.

Reframing the Arctic

These articles cast the polar region, not as a distant periphery, but as a space of imagination, resistance, and self-definition.

Arrested Dreamwork

Synnøve Persen’s landscapes imagine the Arctic beyond the tourist sublime.

Arctic Catwalk

Inuuteq Storch captures the life-or-death struggle between indigenous identity and its image.

In Their Own Right

Greenland’s art scene has arrived. Shamans assist the curators, and the world’s first-ever national gallery devoted to the art of an Indigenous People is taking shape in Nuuk.

Conversations with Kindred Spirits

At last, Greenland’s largest cultural event is about the art and survival of Indigenous Peoples.

Downscaled Power Station

Does Tate’s Turbine Hall have room for anything other than monumental one-liners? Máret Ánne Sara gives it a try.

Defending Greenland

What is worth going to war for? ask Inuk Silis Høegh and Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen in a 2004 work that is now more topical than ever.

Support Kunstkritikk

The Nordic region’s leading art journal asks readers to contribute financially.

Information Bloat

The inaugural exhibition of the New Museum’s expansion is undone by an inability to leave anything out.

The Ethics of Movement

A European tour of works by Frida Kahlo brings attention to the uncertain future of a collection rooted in Mexico’s cultural history.

I Am Showing You This Because it Matters

Showcase images always feature a pair of hands presenting something to us, often another image.

Still So Much Left Unsaid

The feminist exhibition No Master Territories at Kunstnernes Hus unfolds as an open research project that can be extended and reconfigured through new voices.

Pressure Mounts in Venice

Strong reactions from European leaders to Russia's participation in this year’s biennial. Danish minister open to boicott.

The End Is Nigh...ish

Contemporary art’s rhetoric of doom has become a comfortable cliché, as the scramble for relevance turns resistance into a risk-free, legible aesthetic.

Still Fighting

Klara Lidén has turned professional, keeping her body strong and her gaze fierce. Will she still get hurt if she slips off the knife-edge she’s dancing on?

Talking It Through

From artificial intelligence to institutional fatigue, these articles map a cultural field marked both by deep scepticism and the search for new vocabularies.

What Is an Image?

Curator and researcher Antonio Somaini thinks artists are essential for understanding what AI is doing to culture.

Body, Code, Desire

Madeleine Andersson, Arvida Byström, and Tobias Bradford on embodiment and identity in the age of AI.

Transformed in Transit

Cultural theorist Paul Gilroy argues that today’s diasporic networks demand a new vocabulary.

Our Phone Is a Sex Toy

‘Sexuality has been fundamental to technological development’, says artist Mindy Seu.

ʻWe are building a narrative from fragmentsʼ

Architect, historian, and curator Nadi Abusaada visits Oslo to give a lecture on Palestinian art before the Nakba.

Monument to a Coloniser

‘For Indigenous people it can be a little scary to think about erasure and removal when talking about monuments’, says collective New Red Order.

Bartleby, the Cineast

At Moderna Museet Malmö, John Skoog asks if beauty can endure the crude logic of power.

Arctic Catwalk

Inuuteq Storch captures the life-or-death struggle between indigenous identity and its image.

Transformed in Transit

Cultural theorist Paul Gilroy argues that today’s diasporic networks demand a new vocabulary.

Soft Focus, Hard Aura

A glossy promise hovers just beyond the frame at the artist-run space Antics in Stockholm.

CC Hennix’s Endless Equation

Malmö Konsthall’s retrospective feels like falling into someone’s cryptic notebook.

Prophetic Trash

In 2026, Isa Genzken’s assemblages appear as luminous icons. Beauty becomes an anchor when the world refuses to cohere.

Art Schools Are Not Policy Instruments

Recasting Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Art as a classical art school would erode artistic freedom.

Dancing Around an Estate

The major museums in the Nordics are reaching out to expand their audiences like never before. But who is keeping contemporary art and history alive?

The Radiant Light of the Queer Sun

A new book by artist Afrang Nordlöf Malekian and art historian Nour Helou explores beauty as a geopolitical force, from the Iranian Qajar dynasty into the present.

Spring Salad

Geopolitics looms over everything in Denmark. But not on the art scene, which is serving up glam-rock, food happenings, and solo shows featuring international heavyweights.

Millennial Takeover

The Swedish spring is marked by aesthetic confidence and structural uncertainty.

Warning: Flashing Lights

This spring the Norwegian art scene is bursting with sci-fi, political vision, and largest-ever presentations of female artists.

In Their Own Right

Greenland’s art scene has arrived. Shamans assist the curators, and the world’s first-ever national gallery devoted to the art of an Indigenous People is taking shape in Nuuk.

Something Is Rotten

Drawing its title from Hamlet, this series examines a contemporary art field marked by institutional expansion, market pressures, and a waning shared purpose.

The End Is Nigh…ish

Contemporary art’s rhetoric of doom has become a comfortable cliché, as the scramble for relevance turns resistance into a risk-free, legible aesthetic.

Dancing Around an Estate

The major museums in the Nordics are reaching out to expand their audiences like never before. But who is keeping contemporary art and history alive?

Eat Your Phone, Amen!

How do we hold onto what is materially sacred in a time that worships the cloud?

Spiritual Disarmament

Pure hypocrisy: Denmark’s Minister for Culture praises art and culture in the fight against AI while the budget for the National Collection of Photography is slashed.

Consolation Prize

Will poverty save us? A dispatch from Helsinki.

Career Confinement

With the birth of the dealer-critic-system in 1870s France, criticism shifted its focus from the artwork to the artist. It’s been all downhill from there.

Recently published

Antipopulist Front

In Vienna, Mumok’s new director Fatima Hellberg is quietly reshaping how we move through the museum. And how the museum moves through us.

Whales Are Not Singing Anymore

In Oslo, Cecilia Vicuña presents two monumental collective works about the struggle for life in the sea.

Ghost Projector

The past haunts the present through the apparatuses that make our images in Lap See Lam’s exhibition at Henie Onstad Art Center.

The Saddest Show in Art History

A public event in Vilnius launching next year’s Baltic Triennial underscored the radical difference between being claimed by war and claiming detachment from it.

Support Independent Art Criticism Today

Kunstkritikk is free to read, but it’s not free to produce. We’re committed to cultivating an informed and critically engaged public in and around the Nordic art scene. Your contribution helps secure the future of the magazine and enables us to do even better.

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