For the next 10 days, the art scene in Copenhagen and Malmö will be filled with talks, tours, performances, exhibitions, and other events as part of Art Matter's annual contemporary art festival.
Experience art in a cinema foyer, a football club’s locker room, and a wide range of other unusual places when Art Matter hosts an art festival in Copenhagen and Malmö. The aim of the annual festival is to make art accessible to as many people as possible. Therefore, Art Matter organizes city tours on foot or by bike, and hosts a wide range of events such as parties, lectures, and exhibitions for children.
Until this year, Art Matter Festival was called Art Week, but this year it has merged with its sister project Kunsten.nu and received a new name. Art Matter Festival is a collaboration between more than 70 different art institutions, from the well-known large ones like Charlottenborg, Glyptoteket, and Louisiana to small visionary and unknown project spaces and galleries. There are over 150 different events from May 23 to June 1.
“When art is at its best, it shifts our perspective on ourselves and the world. But it can also sometimes be inaccessible. We want to help people engage with art and artists in a positive way,” explains Jan Falk Borup, Program Manager at Art Matter Festival.
Guided tours
This year, Art Matter Festival organizes two guided Art Tours around the Copenhagen art scene, visiting galleries and exhibition spaces – but also more unusual places, such as a micro-exhibition in a window in Vesterbro. One tour takes place by bike in Vesterbro, and the other on foot in the inner city.
This year, Art Matter Festival organizes two guided Art Tours around the Copenhagen art scene, visiting galleries and exhibition spaces – but also more unusual places, such as a micro-exhibition in a window in Vesterbro. One tour takes place by bike in Vesterbro, and the other on foot in the inner city.
“We have been doing Art Tours for many years now, and it is one of our very popular formats. This is probably because it is quite a unique experience,” explains Program Manager Jan Falk Borup.
Once you have chosen an Art Tour, you can sign up online, and you will receive a meeting time and place. Then, you just need to show up. You will be taken on a route by one of Art Matter Festival’s guides, visiting exhibitions, museums, and galleries. At each location, you will be welcomed by curators, the artists themselves, and other representatives who will talk about the works and their process. You can ask questions and discuss your experiences.
Get a different perspective on society
One of the important aims of Art Matter Festival is to highlight art that shifts our perspective on ourselves and the world around us. Several events at this year’s festival fall into this category.
One of the important aims of Art Matter Festival is to highlight art that shifts our perspective on ourselves and the world around us. Several events at this year’s festival fall into this category.
For example, the debate event Infinite Dreams - About Money. Over time and across geographies, money and value have had different systems and visual expressions, from porcelain snails to tulip bulbs to today's cryptocurrency. Join us for an interdisciplinary conversation addressing the common concern of economics with invited participants with backgrounds in economics, philosophy, art, and law.
Another dialogue takes place in I see you, will you see me? which invites you on a journey exploring experiences of alienation and growing up in a white majority society. It attempts to portray experiences of growing up between multiple cultures, where survival mechanisms are embedded in behavior to adapt to the norms and culture of whiteness. Maya Ndiaye's live performance, combined with Mathias Didia's cinematic testimonials, creates the framework for the evening.
Later in the week, you can hear about the meaning of art in the workplace. Are you interested in how art can change workplaces? Then join us for this talk where we zoom in on the question of how art installed or otherwise present in work environments affects collaborative climate, mental health, work processes, and creativity.
Party with art
If you like to party, there are also plenty of opportunities to experience art with a drink in hand and DJ music in your ears.
If you like to party, there are also plenty of opportunities to experience art with a drink in hand and DJ music in your ears.
Join us on a journey through the streets of Aleppo, memories and resistance in Belarus, protest music, and much more when the international network for persecuted artists, ICORN, hosts a Party for Artistic Freedom at Nikolaj Kunsthal. It will be a magnificent evening of concerts, talks, poetry, and performances in a scenography of art. DJs will guide us through the evening while the bar moves outside into the evening sun.
You can also party with a 360-degree sunset from the top of the Round Tower with drinks and a DJ when the Round Tower’s Top Kiosk is transformed into a cozy evening bar. This evening, Future Female Sounds is curating the music and has invited DJ Sofie Jacobi to play the sunset over the city. Visitors can also explore the tower and the current exhibition “Extended Exposure,” which will be open until 22:00.
Jump into the void between reality and artificial intelligence and get your perspective on the world twisted when FRIISLAND hosts an AI and hip hop Art Bar. In addition to a hip hop concert, you can experience two new performances with Kristoffer Ørum and Linnea Langfjord.
Bring the children
Art Matter Festival also includes a series of events aimed at families with children.
Art Matter Festival also includes a series of events aimed at families with children.
Every Sunday from 10:00 to 13:00, Folkehuset Absalon hosts a workshop with different themes, where you either paint, cut and glue, or create various things from session to session. This time you can make your own artwork. If you need inspiration, there is, at the same time as the workshop, a vernissage with about twenty works made by a series of new, unknown artists specially selected by Art Matter Festival. The artists will be present to talk about their work.
In the digital age, children and young people may need to encounter the world through sensory, physical experiences. With the sausage as a focal point, Rune Fjord and Dyssegårdsskolen bring topics such as food and sustainability into debate in a humorous way in a work called Press the Sausage (Tryk på Pølsen). Together with students from Dyssegårdsskolen, artist Rune Fjord transforms plant materials from the schoolyard and local kitchen waste into sausages in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. At the exhibition, you can try making a sausage yourself.
Bring the family to Kunsthal Charlottenborg when one of the art hall’s skilled guides gives an introduction to the critically acclaimed exhibition Reincarnations of Shadows by Thao Nguyen Phan. Through fairy tales, literature, philosophy, and everyday life, the Vietnamese artist creates dreamlike and poetic narratives that address pressing questions about her homeland’s history in relation to contemporary environmental and social changes.
