Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art is hosting Swedish artist Klara Lidén’s exhibition titled “Kunstwerke”. On view until 10 May 2026, this exhibition is the artist’s first major institutional solo exhibition, encompassing more than twenty years of her practice. Klara Lidén’s early photograph from 2005, “Self Portrait with the Keys to the City”, perfectly summarises her artistic approach: bolt cutters, keys, a flashlight, and a manhole cover lifter — tools used to test the rules governing urban infrastructure — are the “keys to the city”.
Klara Lidén’s Artistic Philosophy: Redefining Space
Trained in architecture, Lidén’s practice draws nourishment from the public spaces of the cities she has lived in (Berlin, New York, and Stockholm). The materials she collects from these urban environments — cardboard, metal, concrete, wood, fences, and street banners — are transformed into works that redefine space. Found objects such as rubbish bins or municipal lighting components are brought directly into the exhibition space. Lidén describes these processes as “un-structuring”: the deliberate repurposing and transformation of objects. Her video works also continue her reflections on how the body occupies both private and public space and how these spaces define and control movement. Lidén moves through the city by falling, climbing, and dancing in the streets, on train carriages, on street signs, and in drainage pipes, thereby engaging with the aesthetics and mechanisms of social order and raising fundamental questions about property, access, use, and participation.
“Kunstwerke”: The Transformation of Urban Space
Spanning three floors of KW, the “Kunstwerke” exhibition brings together central works from Lidén’s practice from the early 2000s to the present. The exhibition highlights the artist’s ability to use the urban environment as a source of material and to reinterpret it. The works invite the viewer to look at the ordinary elements of the urban landscape with fresh eyes and to discover their potential. By transforming these objects into artworks, Lidén questions their original functions and creates new layers of meaning.
The installations, public interventions, and improvised actions in the exhibition are defined by Lidén’s destructive humour, which explores the interplay between physical, public, and private spaces within the urban environment. Through her works, the artist encourages the viewer to question the invisible rules and structures of the cities we inhabit. This exhibition demonstrates that art is not only an aesthetic experience but also a tool for social and political critique.
Klara Lidén’s “Kunstwerke” exhibition offers an experience that pushes the boundaries of contemporary art and takes the viewer on an unusual intellectual journey. By hosting Lidén’s groundbreaking works, KW Institute for Contemporary Art once again highlights art’s relationship with the urban environment and its power to question social norms. This exhibition is an unmissable opportunity for anyone who wants to rethink their relationship with the city and with art.
