STOCKHOLM.- The Danish artist Jeppe Hein’s exhibition “Who are you really?” is co-created by the visitors. At Moderna Museet, in the building and the entrance plaza, the audience will find several “stations” that invite visitors of all ages to play, take part in physical activities and sensory experiences. Welcome to the spring and summer exhibition where you can join in and leave your mark, and perhaps find out who you really are!

Jeppe Hein (b. 1974) is a Berlin-based artist who has created numerous permanent works and exhibitions all over the world in the past two decades. Increasingly, he involves the public in his work, in a highly concrete sense. Since 2013, following a period of illness due to overwork, his art has taken on a distinctly existential and explorative dimension.

For the current exhibition at Moderna Museet, the director Gitte Ørskou, curator of the current exhibition, stipulated certain conditions: No shipping of works from abroad, in line with the Museum’s ambition for 2022 to reduce climate impact. Jeppe Hein was also given access to spaces in the building that are not usually intended or used on their own for entire exhibitions.

Said and done: “Who are you really?” was produced on site, the visitors contribute to the art experience, and the artist has appropriated the available spaces both indoors and outdoors. The exhibition relates to the DNA of Moderna Museet – a museum bustling with activities, such as Palle Nielson’s exhibition “Modellen” (The Model, 1968), a childrens’ playground that consisted of a foam rubber pool to bounce in, colours for finger-painting and structures for climbing and bodily engagement.

–The encounter with Jeppe Hein’s practice reveals our potential to create our own world, says Gitte Ørskou. Through his art, the complex awareness of the relation between mankind and the world becomes a palpable and immediate sensory experience that we recognise intuitively rather than intellectually.




The exhibition at Moderna Museet consists of three parts. Outside, visitors can interact physically and influence a fountain that spurts water in irregular patterns. On a long, wave-shaped wall, there are vertical brushstrokes in blue paint that follow how the human body inhales and exhales. The work, “Breathe with Me”, has previously been featured at the UN Headquarters in New York in 2019.

Indoors, Jeppe Hein has created a sequence of seven rooms in the Museum’s long corridor, linked in colour and form to the seven chakras, used in yoga and other practises. In each room, visitors can participate in small exercises and simple activities, assisted by the museum hosts: “I am”, “I feel”, “I do”, “I love”, “I speak”, “I see” and “I understand”.

The third part of the exhibition consists of four spaces in the collection presentation, where the audience is invited to join workshops: “Today I feel like”, that occurs to times, “Your mirror”, “Who are you really?” and “Breathe with me”.

By asking “Who are you really?” Jeppe Hein encourages visitors to interact and engage with the situations he stages.

–My artistic practice is about people, physical encounters, dialogue and social interaction. You viewers are an indispensable aspect of my art, and most of my installations can only be experienced if you are there. Sometimes I even offer you the opportunity to make your own works. This time, there will not be any works at all without you. Will that change your perception of art, of museums of yourself? asks Jeppe Hein.

Jeppe Hein, b. 1974 in Copenhagen, lives and works in Berlin. He received his education from Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi (1997–2003) and Städel Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt am Main (1999–2000). During the past twenty years Jeppe Hein has had numerous solo exhibitions in Europe, USA, Asia and Australia along with many group exhibitions. He has created extensive public art projects and has produced permanent public art works throughout the world. His art is represented in collections at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Aarhus, Tate Gallery in London, MOCA (Muse several um of Contemporary Art) in Los Angeles and MNAM (Musée National d'Art Moderne) Centre Pompidou in Paris, and others. Jeppe Hein is also the founder of several brands and products, for example a restaurant, a coffee-brand and street fashion.