{"id":753351,"date":"2026-08-29T07:36:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T07:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753351\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T07:36:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T07:36:24","slug":"we-dont-think-it-should-be-controversial-to-talk-about-these-subjects-bonniers-konsthall-opens-exhibition-on-art-as-antifascist-resistance-ahead-of-swedish-election-the-art-newsp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753351\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We don’t think it should be controversial to talk about these subjects\u2019: Bonniers Konsthall opens exhibition on art as antifascist resistance ahead of Swedish election – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new exhibition in Sweden explores antifascist art and the role of culture and art in navigating today’s fraught politics, before the country goes to the polls later this month. Bonniers Konsthall, a contemporary art institution in Stockholm, presents the timely show The Defeated: The Aesthetics of Resistance 2026\u00a0(until 8 November) featuring works by 19 international artists.<\/p>\n

This exhibition borrows its title from two books by the Swedish-German artist, filmmaker and playwright Peter Weiss (1916\u201382): The Defeated (De besegrade),\u00a0written in Swedish and published by the Bonniers publishing house in 1948, and The Aesthetics of Resistance, written in German and published in three volumes between 1975 and 1981.<\/p>\n

The Aesthetics of Resistance, which depicts the struggle against fascism in several European countries in the years before the Second World War, is the starting point. According to Duke University Press<\/a>, which published the English translation in 2005, Weiss suggests that \u201cmeaning lies in embracing resistance, no matter how intense the oppression, and that we must look to art for new models of political action and social understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The selected artists respond in different ways to the themes and issues raised in the novel, incorporating eight newly commissioned works. The exhibition is curated by Joanna Nordin, the artistic director at Bonniers Konsthall, along with the Stockholm-based researcher Kim West and the French curator Fran\u00e7ois Piron.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have invited a large group of artists from around the world to engage with the novel and with us, and to reply in their own artistic medium and within their own context, asking\u2014what could an aesthetics of resistance mean today?\u201d Nordin tells The Art Newspaper.<\/p>\n

The exhibition is timely, opening two weeks before Sweden\u2019s parliamentary election is scheduled to take place (13 September). Since taking power in 2022, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s centre-right minority government has been backed by the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats party, which could become an official coalition partner if the right triumphs<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cResponding to the global rise of far-right movements and the emergence of new forms of fascism taking shape around the world, the exhibition provides a timely platform for public reflection and debate,\u201d says Nordin. \u201cThis exhibition is a response in a world that seems to have lost its footing in relation to democracy and basic human rights. We don’t think it should be controversial to talk about these subjects. In fact it is needed very much.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kateryna Lysovenko, Madness of Fascism, 2026<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Kateryna Lysovenko<\/p>\n

Kateryna Lysovenko of Ukraine presents Madness of Fascism\u00a0(2026), a new painting showing a \u201cfascist\u201d family against a backdrop of human organs. \u201cI searched on social media\u00a0for family photos of [people] supporting Russian imperialism but it could be any white\u00a0family with adult members holding fascist views,\u201d Lysovenko tells The Art Newspaper.\u00a0The Lebanese artist Ali Cherri shows The Summoner, Grafting (2026), a hybrid sculpture melding an Italian stone fountain head with a headless Thai statuette torso.<\/p>\n

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Ali Cherri, The Summoner (Grafting), 2026<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Ali Cherri; Photo: Nicolas Brasseur<\/p>\n

A large textile piece by Hamedine Kane and Val\u00e9rie Osouf looks to Th\u00e9odore G\u00e9ricault’s famed 19th-century painting Raft of the Medusa for inspiration; Where the Seams Hold Against the Fixed Narrative (2026) incorporates images of 20th-century liberation movements. The exhibition also includes historical works by Peter Weiss and his wife and artistic collaborator Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss (1928-2022), including her junk metal effigy Bogey\u00a0(1967) made for Weiss’s 1966 play Song from the Lusitanian Bogey.<\/p>\n

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Installation view of The Defeated: The Aesthetics of Resistance 2026 at Bonniers Konsthall, including Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss’s Skr\u00e5puken \/ The Bogey (1967) and Hamedine Kane & Val\u00e9rie Osouf’s Where the Seams Hold Against the Fixed Narrative (2026)<\/p>\n

Bonnier Art Gallery (Jean-Baptiste B\u00e9ranger)<\/p>\n

Nordin says: \u201cIn the vein of Weiss\u2019 writing, it is an exhibition that works with the idea of the montage\u2014an exhibition that goes between times, places, experiences and voices. It is an exhibition built on associations weaving together the historical, the political, the philosophical and the existential. This has also been a great way of working as a group of curators, all bringing our perspectives and questions to the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

An accompanying series of essays by leading philosophers and writers, such as Esther Leslie of Birkbeck College, University of London, is integral also to the project. \u201cIn that sense you could say that the exhibition also extends to the format of the book,\u201d Nordin says. Meanwhile a key\u00a0avant-garde film by Weiss\u2014a documentary<\/a> about the late Swedish textile artist Anna Casparsson\u2014is currently being screened at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet (The Isle of Bliss<\/a>, until 27 September).<\/p>\n

The Defeated: The Aesthetics of Resistance 2026<\/a>, until 8 November, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new exhibition in Sweden explores antifascist art and the role of culture and art in navigating today’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6442,6225,6485,6486,1120,461,96,10993,1668,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-753351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-activism","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-elections","tag-entertainment","tag-exhibitions","tag-sweden","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}