February 14, 2026–May 31, 2027
Oslo 0165
Norway
Hours: Wednesday and Friday–Sunday 12–5pm
Thursday 12–7pm
Founded for artists by artists in 1921 by the Oslo avant-garde, UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society) is one of Norway’s core institutions supporting new productions and exhibiting the practices of young, contemporary artists.
Throughout 2026 UKS unfolds Lessons in Love, an experimental curatorial programme presenting new commissions by artists chosen through an artist-juried open call. In parallel, UKS continues our programme of informal social functions, supportive environments and intellectual exchange.
Lessons in Love
Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo & Wei Ting Tseng, Jessica Williams, Joen Vedel, Yaniya Mikhalina, Minne Kersten, Sebastian Rusten
February 14, 2026–January 31, 2027
We’ve wondered lately what it means to move through life with love. Love, with its scions and tendrils is, after all, what tethers us to each other and to the world. Obsession, devotion, generosity, ambition, disappointment, grief, indignation, impatience, embarrassment, resignation, desire and peace: all are expressions of love.
In Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay (1986), Anne Carson writes: ‘No simple map of the emotions is available here. Desire is not simple… the act of love is a mingling… and desire melts the limbs… Boundaries of body, categories of thought, are confounded.’
Love pushes us to act. We grow in love. And certainly, but not without complication, love is what moves us to make art and to experience it, to remain committed, to basically stick with it all despite the crap. Lessons in Love is an exhibition in motion and an unfolding year-long programme introducing seven artistic practices, with artists working both individually and together.
Lessons in Love presents works by Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo & Wei Ting Tseng, Jessica Williams, Joen Vedel, Yaniya Mikhalina, Minne Kersten, and Sebastian Rusten—each pondering the affectionate and often difficult relationships that shape and nourish us—in a moving, pulsating exhibition and a series of new commissions over the course of 2026. We present to you a declaration of devotion to loved ones living and lost, to the planet, but most of all, to art.
Dance Dance Revolution: Oslo
Afrang Nordlöf Malekian
February 26, 2026–May 31, 2027
UKS is proud to announce our first large-scale institutional commission of social practice in collaboration with KORO (Public Art Norway).
Dance Dance Revolution: Oslo is the first Norwegian commission by Swedish-Iranian artist Afrang Nordlöf Malekian (b. 1995, Sweden). The research based participatory performance traces the network of Iranian home parties in Oslo—informal social meetings known as mehmani. These gatherings, featuring gender-fluid dance tracing back to 18th-century Qajar-era Iran, unfold a life-affirming political resistance to and critique of the Iranian regime and other imperial powers. Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which banned dance music, the soundtracks for mehmani were mainly produced by Iranians in exile.
Throughout 2026, Nordlöf Malekian will engage with Iranian social dance, music and food practices in Oslo that shape these migratory home parties across generations. The participatory research process will culminate in collective choreographic scores through video games, interactive sculptures and screenings. Drawing on the decorative, hyper-commercial and kitschy aesthetics of mehmani, the scores reorient prohibitive nationalist traditions through speculative forms of world-making. Dance Dance Revolution: Oslo is an invitation to think through what has come to be defined as ‘political’ or ‘progressive’ through play and performance.
The project is supported by KORO (Public Art Norway).
Afrang Nordlöf Malekian was selected from among 113 applications to UKS’s open call. The applications included a range of socially engaged practitioners, with themes and genres crossing performance, art in public space and design. The shortlisted artists were Geir Backe Altern (b. 1978, Norway), Maja Bekan (b. 1975, Yugoslavia), Ji Jia (b. 1994, China), Shahrzad Malekian (b. 1983, Iran) and Maike Statz (b. 1992, Australia).
