The Speaker’s Room brings Eliyah Mesayer’s imaginary state Illiyeen back to Den Frie in a shadow version of a state office, displacing the architecture of power from the political to the poetic.

 

Eliyah Mesayer’s artistic practice balances on the threshold between reality and fiction. Across installation, performance, and poetry, she materialises and intertwines historical facts with fiction in dreamy manifestations. Her ongoing project Illiyeen originates from a Bedouin expression referring to a celestial register in which the deeds of the righteous are recorded and preserved; in Mesayer’s practice, this is transformed into an allegorical state beyond geographic and national boundaries. From this point, she unfolds a fictional and poetic world-building in which imagination functions as a method for examining how power is formed, distributed, and represented.

 

In The Speaker’s Room, Illiyeen is conjured as a state office stripped of real-political function, with architecture reduced to texture, shadows, and absence. Familiar symbols of authority dissolve through subtle shifts, leaving behind an abandoned room in which another form of national narrative emerges: one not held together by shared identity, national boundaries, or authoritative symbols, but by collective and dreamlike imaginaries of community.

 

Mesayer has previously exhibited at Den Frie as part of Den Frie Morgen (2020) and Bad Timing – Or How to Write History without Objects (2023). The exhibition in OSLO thus continues Den Frie’s curatorial ambition of recurring collaborations with artists.

 

The exhibition space OSLO

OSLO is Den Frie’s lower-floor exhibition space dedicated to solo projects. At OSLO, we produce and present new works by artists of different nationalities, generations, and media, made specifically for Den Frie and with a focus on social and political urgency, aiming at making sense of the world today. Den Frie was founded by artists with an experimental vision and collective spirit. OSLO continues this legacy by supporting innovative artistic practices in the present.The name OSLO is a reference to Den Frie’s location at Oslo Plads and an anagram for solo.

In April 2026, Toaster presents Denmark’s first international performance biennale, taking place across Den Frie and Husets Teater.

 

The biennale offers a current portrait of the performance field within both visual art and performing arts – and the many intersections between them – which are rapidly evolving nationally as well as internationally. The focus is state of the art: taking the temperature of the field right now.

 

Experience more than 20 performances, including 10 entirely new works created specifically for the biennial. The artists range from established performance practitioners to emerging talents – sometimes within the same work.

The programme encompasses works rooted in dance, text, costume, sound, light, music, and space. Performance is here and now – it is the time we live in, and the time we choose to spend together.

 

As an annual pass holder at Den Frie, you can register for a complimentary Biennale Pass to Toaster Performance Biennale (regular price 550 DKK / 350 DKK). You will receive a registration code when purchasing an annual pass here.

 

View the full programme and find your Biennale Pass here.

 

Programme for Den Frie

 

Thursday 16.04

Esben Weile Kjær: 20.30 – 01.00

 

Friday 17.04

Ed Atkins: 18.00 – 18.30
Bob Kil: 19.00 – 19.30
Camilla Lind: 20.30 – 22.00

 

Saturday 18.04

Bob Kil: 17.00 – 17.30

Karis Zidore: 18.00 – 18.40

Camilla Lind: 19.00 – 20.30

LILITH: 21.00 – 23.00

 

Sunday 19.04

Julienne Doko: 15.00 – 15.20

Karis Zidore: 15.30 – 16.10

Camilla Lind: 16.30 – 18.00

 

Wednesday 22.04

Paolo de Venecia Gile: 17.00 – 20.00

Jessie Kleemann: 18.30 – 19.30

 

Thursday 23.04

Paolo de Venecia Gile: 17.00 – 20.00

Jessie Kleemann: 18.30 – 19.30

Eliyah Mesayer: 19.30 – 20.15

Jules Fischer: 21.00 – 22.00

 

Friday 24.04

LILITH: 17.30 – 20.30

Jules Fischer: 21.00 – 22.00

 

Saturday 25.04

Marthe Ramm Fortun: 13.00 – 14.00

Adam Christensen: 14.30 – 15.00

LILITH: 17.30 – 20.30

 

Sunday 26.04

Julienne Doko: kl. 13-13.20

Marthe Ramm Fortun: 13.45 – 14.45

Adam Christensen: 15.00 – 15.30

Eliyah Mesayer: 16.00 – 17.00

Copenhagen now has a new permanent landmark. Over the past year, Isa Genzken’s monumental sculpture Vollmond has been temporarily installed outside Den Frie. Thanks to generous support from Ny Carlsbergfondet, Villum Fonden, and Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Found, it is now certain that the work will remain in place, keeping Copenhagen a city of two moons.

 

The 16.5-metre-high sculpture in steel, fibreglass, and LED is by the German artist Isa Genzken. With her decisive contribution to the development of sculpture and installation, Genzken is one of the most influential figures in international contemporary art. Permanent works by the artist in public space are, however, rare; Rose II in MoMA’s sculpture garden in New York is among the few. Den Frie is therefore in exclusive company.

 

At Den Frie, we are pleased that Isa Genzken’s full moon can now remain in Østerbro. Chair of Den Frie, artist Milena Bonifacini, says: “On behalf of Den Frie, I would like to express our excitement that, through generous donations, we have been able to acquire Isa Genzken’s sculpture Vollmond. For some time, it has cast its soft moonlight across our newly renovated forecourt, and it will now continue to do so alongside works by Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen and Sophia Kalkau.”

Isa Genzken’s 16-meter-tall sculpture Vollmond has been standing in front of Den Frie for nearly a year as an inscrutable moon antenna, receiving the energies of the city. World Receiver brings together further landmark works from the German artist’s production over the past decades, foregrounding a consistently world-facing practice whose formal and material inventiveness has positioned her as one of the most influential artists of her generation.

 

The exhibition is anchored in Genzken’s work with assemblage, in which she playfully yet incisively brings together everyday materials, utilitarian objects, luxury products, photographs, and text fragments. Her works function as seismographs, registering and absorbing cultural displacements. Here, punk and posh meet in a gaze that is both critical and filled with love for the commercialised and mediated reality that shapes our present. Beneath the bright colours and glittering surfaces, however, lurk the destructive forces of contemporary life—consumer culture, war, and inequality. And yet, Isa Genzken’s ambiguous works ultimately remain fundamentally open and hopeful in their orientation toward the future, no matter how weird it may become.

 

Isa Genzken represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and has had numerous major exhibitions, including a large retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 2013. At Den Frie, she has previously participated in the group exhibitions Becoming Animal (2018) and Another Surrealism (2022). World Receiver is her first institutional solo exhibition in Scandinavia.

 

Press kit

The artists’ association Grønningen was founded in 1915 and, with its more than 40 members, is among the largest in the country.
Grønningen exhibits at Den Frie every other year, and on December 6 we open the doors for Grønningen 2025, which — in addition to occupying all the exhibition halls — also presents FOCUS, consisting this year of seven curated light works on Den Frie’s forecourt and façade.