Jessie Kleemann
Jessie Kleemann is a Greenlandic performance artist, painter, installation artist and poet.
Jessie Kleemann. Photo: Luna Stage
Artist
About
Jessie Kleemann (b. 1959, Upernavik, Kalaallit Nunaat / Greenland) trained as an actress at Tuukkaq Theatre in Denmark and as a visual artist at the Graphic Workshop in Nuuk. She lives in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Primary media
Performance, video.
Contact
Jessie Kleemann is a Greenlandic performance artist, painter, installation artist and poet. Her artistic practice encompasses video works, sculptures, installations and live performances. From 1984 to 1991, she was the director of the Art School in Nuuk.
She works across painting, video, performance, and sculpture. For over four decades, Kleemann has examined questions of land, identity, body, language, memory, and both personal and national sovereignty. Pairing Kalaallit Inuit cultural practices with cutting-edge technology, Kleemann treats tradition, myth, and history as living tools rather than fixed inheritances—as available to her as any physical material. She approaches language in much the same way, moving fluidly between Kalaallisut, Danish, and English. Her own body remains central to her practice, alongside recurring materials such as coffee, beads, and blubber, whose role in shaping Inuit identity she persistently interrogates. Her critique of colonialism extends beyond people to encompass land and climate alike.
A central theme in Jessie Kleemann’s artistic practice is global climate change, which is particularly evident in the Arctic and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). The pain of the Arctic runs as an underlying current through her work. She frequently uses her own body as a means of awakening our memories and connections to the landscape, mythology, the future and Greenland. Through this, she opens up a bodily language that invites us to sense and reflect.
Her most recent book, Arkhticós Dolorôs (2021), was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2022 as well as the Danish Poetry Prize.
In 2026, Kleemann was awarded both the Danish Arts Foundation’s lifetime honorary grant and the Beckett Prize.
At the 16th Gwangju Biennale, You Must Change Your Life (2026), she presented the installation Kamiit Walking in the Kalaallit Illuutaat Pavilion. She also participated in the exhibitions Fire & Ice – On Belonging and Becoming in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) at Copenhagen Contemporary (2026), Bringing In The Tide at Wadden Tide (2026) and Dét der forbinder os | Ataquatigiinneq at Spinderihallerne.
