Female empowerment, Indigenous art from Brazil and Prince Eugen coming 2025

Following the success of the Konstfesten (Art Party) in February 2024, another round of festivities is in order. For four days, we will celebrate art by hosting exhibition openings, performances, as well as talks and lectures by artists, curators, writers, and other cultural workers from near and far. The exhibitions Glicéria Tupinambá’s Traveling Cloak and Room for Living – An Installation by Katarina Spik Skum, will open with the artists present, this will be accompanied by a performative event from d harding. Other participants include eeefff, Mats Wikström, Norra kollektivet, Mikhail TolmachevNiclas Östlind, Bernd Krauss, Benjamin Seroussi, Salman Nawati, Amol Patil, Lena Ylipää, and Geir Tore Holm.

Two new exhibitions open during the Art Party: Room for Living –An Installation by Katarina Spik Skum and The Traveling Cloak.

Exhibition program at Kin Museum of Contemporary Art 2025

The Living Room – An Installation by Katarina Spik Skum.

13 February-31 December 2025
Presentation of the Collection 4.
Reindeer-hide beanbags, cotton drapes decorated with traditional Sámi patterns, wooden tables that have retained the organic forms of branches, and rákkas—mosquito tents made of thin materials. This is a typical Sámi alternative to interior design, created by the artist and duojár (Sámi craftsperson) Katarina Spik Skum. Applying both great skill and material sensibility, Spik Skum creates works to live with, often in collaboration with other duojárat (Sámi craftspeople) and artists. Bringing duodji (Sámi craft) to new spaces entails weaving together arts and crafts with roots in the Lule Sámi region. The artist allows contemporary materials and forms to seep into her designs, which are inspired by life in the goahti (Sámi tent)—a common backdrop during her childhood while spending summers with her mother’s family. Spik Skum is based in Jåhkåmåhkke/Jokkmokk. In collaboration with Tjallegoáhte Authors’ Centre and the Gothenburg Book Fair.

The Traveling Cloak

13 February-11 May 2025
A cloak made of bird feathers takes center stage in the exhibition Glicéria Tupinambá’s Traveling Cloak. The artist and activist Glicéria Tupinambá delves into the history surrounding the cloaks that have been worn and crafted by her people—the Tupinamba of Brazilian Bahia—since ancient times. There are eleven identified historic cloaks today, all of which belong to museums in Europe. Not even one can be found in Brazil. Together with her kinsmen, Glicéria Tupinambá has created new cloaks using ancient methods, weaving with cotton fibres, dipping palm leaves in honey and dressing them in feathers. These new cloaks are important tools for reclaiming history and tradition. In addition to the cloak, the exhibition features video work and what can be dubbed only as “detective maps.” The maps trace the many journeys made by the cloaks, and the artist’s own visions about these journeys. In collaboration with Casa do Povo, Sao Paolo.
Floor 3.

Komtemåtta: A Pioneering Safe Space for Women

10 April-31 August 2025
The unique Fogelstad Women’s Citizens School serves as inspiration for the work of contemporary artists Olivia Plender, Åsa Elzén, Åsa Sonjasdotter, and Petra Bauer. The school originally operated from 1925 to 1954 at the Fogelstad Estate outside Katrineholm and was a self-organized, one-of-a-kind educational experiment created by women, for women. It gathered women from all corners of society to train them in citizenship rights. Several of the founders had been active in the fight for women’s voting rights, and two of them—Elisabet Tamm and Kerstin Hesselgren—were among the five first women elected to the Swedish Riksdag (parliament) in 1921.
Beyond the artworks, the exhibition includes archival materials from the school such as photographs, film, documentation, and books about and by the school’s founders and students. The artist Siri Derkert (1888–1973) was an enthusiastic course participant, and a selection of drawings and sculptures made during her time there will be on display. Around the same time, the Sámi activists Elsa Laula Renberg and Karin Stenberg were active. Their efforts are highlighted in work by Anders Sunna and Susanne Ewerlöf. The exhibition, in collaboration with Norrbotten Museum, shines a light on women from the region that participated in courses at Fogelstad. Graphic design by Maryam Fanni. In collaboration with KvinnSam, Gothenburg University Library, Norrbotten Museum, and Liljevalchs.
Floor 2.

The Landscape, the Light, the Gaze – Matts Leiderstam and Prince Eugen’s altarpiece in Kiruna Church

5 June-14 September 2025
In the summer of 2025, Kiruna Church—weighing six hundred tonnes—will be relocated to the “new” Kiruna in one piece. Prince Eugen’s famous altarpiece will remain in its current place during the move and make the 5-kilometre-long journey inside Gustaf Wickman’s church from 1912. The unusual piece features neither crosses nor people. Instead, it brings our attention to a field accompanied by a grove of leafy trees. This is a landscape located somewhere far away from Kiruna. It did not look like that back then, and it does not look like that today. Might it point at how Kiruna’s landscape might look in the future? One that has been affected by climate change? The artist Matts Leiderstam has studied the origins and creation of the painting, giving particular attention to the artist’s sketches. In this way, he delves further into a personal interest in landscape painting, and how landscape paintings are perceived by the viewer and their gendered gaze. Also included in the exhibition are a number of new paintings and other works. In collaboration with Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde, where the exhibition will be shown at the end of 2025.

Women in the North: Kajsa Zetterquist in Focus

11 September 2025-4 January 2026
This exhibition celebrates the life and work of 88-year-old artist and activist Kajsa Zetterquist from Saltfjellet, west of Arjeplog. On display are her informal paintings, as well as a video portrait created by Ingela Johansson, and contextual material curated by Ilmira Bolotyan and Olga Shirokostup. After studying at the Academy of Art under Ragnar Sandberg and Lennart Rodhe during the 1950s, Zetterquist relocated to live with her husband, the artist Per Adde, in a roadless area on the Norwegian side of Sápmi. They set up their studios there and lived a unique life coloured by art and societal engagements, not least with Sámi activists in conjunction with the protests against the expansion of the Alta River. The Adde Zetterquist Art Gallery was inaugurated in 2013 in Storjord, where work by both artists is on permanent display. In collaboration with Nordnorsk kunstnersenter.

Dora Garcia meets Pablo Picasso
25 September 2025-25 January 2026
Sixty years ago, Kiruna City Hall hosted a renowned exhibition with works by Pablo Picasso. Kin will now loan some of the very same artworks that were on view in Kiruna in 1965 from Moderna Museet. The artist Dora Garcia (Madrid/Oslo) will make a new work in relation to Picasso’s oeuvre and the exhibition that took place sixty years ago.

The exhibition In the Footsteps of the Stars--The Embroidered Worlds of Britta Marakatt-Labba is shown until 16 March 2025. The retrospective exhibition features around eighty works spanning over five decades. Among the works on display is Historjá (2004–2007), a twenty-four-metre-long embroidery originally commissioned by Romsa/Tromsø University. The piece garnered a great deal of attention when it was exhibited at Documenta 14 in Kassel in 2017, which can be considered Marakatt-Labba’s international breakthrough. This, as well as her participation in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2022, have made her an esteemed artist on the international stage. As part of the exhibition, Kin has organised a series of lectures and talks based on themes raised in the work, for example how reindeer herding can be affected by climate change, or the effects of wind farms and mining on the Sámi way of life. In collaboration with Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

The Collection/Recent Acquisitions, floor 4.

Works by Lena Stenberg, Hans Ragnar Mathiesen, Karin Keisu and Josse Thuresson, Olof Marsja, Geir Tore Holm och Sössa Jörgensen, Behzad Khosravi Noori and Staffan Westerberg.

In Norrbotten

1 January-31 December 2025

Three traveling exhibitions produced by Kin will tour the region of Norrbotten: A box in a box in a box – Thoughts and Art by Staffan Westerberg, curated by Andjeas Ejiksson; Doing What You Want – Marie-Louise Ekman’s Art over Fifty Years; and Journey Through Dawn – the Graphic Art of Britta Marakatt-Labba.

Questions in Contemporary Art (Samtidskonstens frågor).

Augusti 2024-maj 2025

Kin has designed a course in contemporary art for students wishing to study part-time at Sunderby Adult College (Sunderby folkhögskola). The course is designed for approximately twenty participants and is run by the curator, critic, teacher, and Deputy Director of Kin, Judith Schwarzbart, together with Bernd Krauss, artist and teacher at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Course participants will be introduced to some of the central themes of contemporary art, such as “working by hand,” “artistic research,” “the importance of context,” “performativity,” “art and activism,” “art theory,” and “artistic practice.” These topics will be discussed in lectures, talks and seminars, where the participants read relevant texts and consult contemporary artworks. The artists who are exhibiting at Kin, or working with the museum in other ways, will also contribute to the course. Some parts of the course will be held in English.
Classes will be held in-person at Sunderby College and at Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna from Thursday to Sunday, towards the end of each month. On Fridays, there will be an open lecture that can be attended both online and in person. The remainder of the sessions are provided in person and consist of seminars, presentations and workshops. The series of open lectures has been created in collaborations with Happis Arts & Crafts at the Fenno-Swedish College in Haparanda.

Image 1: Feather Cloak by Gliceriá Tupinamba. Photo: Perola Dutra.
Image 2: Åsa Elzén.