Copenhagen DK-1414
Denmark
O—Overgaden is one of the few large-scale art institutions in Denmark with an unwavering focus on mounting exhibitions by emerging artists, local and international. This autumn, alongside IN PROTEST AND IN CARE, a large-scale group exhibition unfolding bodily complexity and how societal structures disable, O presents solo shows by visual artists Bruno Zhu, Selina Rom Andersen, and Ellinor Åslund. Each exhibition is accompanied by a publication in O’s series, designed by fanfare and released in print and available online for free download.
IN PROTEST AND IN CARE
August 28–October 25, 2026
Artists: Kirstine Aarkrog, Panteha Abareshi, Rikke Benborg, Jesse Darling, Julie Falk, Kasper Hesselbjerg, Marie Kølbæk Iversen, Jakob Jakobsen, Derek Jarman/Christopher Robert Jones & Liza Sylvestre, Frida Lisa Carstensen Jersø, Christine Sun Kim & Thomas Mader, Carolyn Lazard, Elisabeth Molin, Bernd Oppl, Alex Dolores Salerno, Victor Vejle, Anna Walther, and Bobbi-Johanne Østervang
Curated by Anne Kølbæk Iversen as part of a three-year research project, the group exhibition IN PROTEST AND IN CARE features works engaging with bodily complexity, temporary and permanent impairment, and the physical as well as linguistic barriers that disable—separating the normative from the non-normative; the sick from the healthy; the productive from the unproductive. Across a wide range of materials and media, the works propose new languages for experiences of marginalization and vulnerability, but also for interdependence and new forms of community, moving between the poetic and imaginative, the political and the humorous.
Bruno Zhu: Women Upstairs, O—Overgaden x Men at Work, Huset for Kunst og Design, Holstebro
September 12–October 25, 2026
Articulating parallels between societal policies and the aesthetics of fashion, Bruno Zhu’s (b. 1991, Portugal) first solo presentation in Denmark is a dual exhibition drawing a hypothetical line—a parade or catwalk of sorts—from the country’s rural west, with the show Men at Work at Huset for Kunst og Design (HFKD) in Holstebro, to its metropolitan east, with the exhibition Women Upstairs at O—Overgaden in Copenhagen. While Men at Work features images of undressed male models mounted on sandwich boards, Women Upstairs presents four nude, female mannequins posing inside enlarged green emergency exit signs. A baby, a toddler, a teenager, and an adult each replace the exit sign’s classic pictogram figure inside the four garish cabinets. One hand of each female mannequin is modified to mimic a gun, taking a shot at the exit, at escape from the institutional mold—an infrastructure explicitly not fitted for women.
Selina Rom Andersen
November 20, 2026–January 31, 2027
A slapstick narrator and artistic collectivist, Selina Rom Andersen (b. 1996, Denmark) works across forms stretching from graphic novels about society’s anarchic outcasts, Modløse 1 + 2, through publishing projects such as the magazine Crazy in Bed, and onwards into filmmaking, including the collectively produced “Julekalender” Karen from the Mill, a TV series in 24 episodes leading up to Christmas. For her first large-scale solo exhibition, Andersen focuses exclusively on the calves of the King of Denmark. The figural force of His Majesty King Frederik X, whose claim to fame is popularizing sports via the annual Royal Run that occupies the streets of Copenhagen and other cities across Denmark, is thus scrutinized via his calves that are cast in gold—a process that will be filmed as a mockumentary featuring a lookalike cameo of the King as well as a wider cast.
Ellinor Åslund
November 20, 2026–January 31, 2027
A polymath of artistic forms—spanning sculpture, musical films, and live performances—Ellinor Åslund (b. 1991, Sweden) builds feminist issues and Brechtian critique into rickety, glazed ceramic dolls whose stories unfold via her own puppetry, operatic singing, and slow, yet epic, musical scores. For Åslund’s first institutional solo exhibition at O—Overgaden, a staged world—reminiscent of Venice or the canals of O—Overgaden’s local neighborhood Christianshavn—unfolds in several acts, following a broad cast of figures including an immigrant worker, an opera diva, a bartender, a failed revolutionary, and the devil. Mirroring a contemporary state of mind, the figures and their Venetian masking—historically used to mock and upend individual identities and social hierarchies—form a destabilized realm suspended between dream and reality.
Team: Rhea Dall (Director & Chief Curator), Anne Mikél Jensen (Arts Administrator & Managing Editor), Vera Østrup (Curator & Project Coordinator), Asta Kjærulff Bay (Press Coordinator), Nikolaj Phillipsen (Installation Manager, parental leave cover), Anne Kølbæk Iversen (Postdoc Researcher), and Clara Linn Collins-Andersen (Curatorial Assistant)
Support: O’s main funder is the Danish Arts Foundation. Further generous regular supporters include the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation, the Obel Family Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, the New Carlsberg Foundation, 15. Juni Fonden, and Beckett-Fonden.
