Spin a globe, pick a country, and start exploring.
We hope you’ve been enjoying exploring cities around the world with Artfacts’s new updates. This week, we’re taking it one step further…
Now you can explore a country at length.
Leading galleries, artists, museums, curators and other venues await, with the click of your mouse. It’s LGBT+ history month in the UK, so we’ve taken that as inspiration to find a progressive, inclusive country to discuss.
They legalised homosexuality in 1944, and in 1972 were the first country in the world to allow transgender persons to change their legal gender post-sex reassignment surgery. They’re leaders in gender equality, known for their viking past, their beauty, their founding of Ikea, and their deep love of… Fika.
Yes, we’re talking about Sweden.
Gallery.
Gallery Magnus Karlsson, ranked 6 in Sweden, and 983 globally, was founded in 1990 in Västerås, a city 100 km west of Stockholm, before it moved to the capital in 1997. Their focus is to show the work of emerging artists from Sweden.
They represent the prominent contemporary artist Mamma Andersson, her evocative works of the everyday carrying an air of mystery with them. Last year she was part of an exhibition hosted by the Mendes Wood Dm– Brussels location, which you may remember as one of the leading Brazillian galleries we featured in our newsletter a few weeks ago.
Museum.
Fotografiska, founded in 2010 is the largest photography museum in the world. They do not display their own collection, instead exhibitions (of which there are multiple at one time) are “developed directly with the artists, estates, collections and galleries or curated around a central theme.”
Their focus is on great photography, be that from newcomers or the biggest names in the field. One featured Swedish photographer was Lars Tunbjörk, known for his quirky, witty, vividly colourful, captured moments of everyday swedish life.
Other Venue.
Galleri 54 is a project space, gallery and platform for discussion and realisation of new thoughts and ideas, with an impressively long history. Run by the board of Group 54 (est. 1954) since 1959, the group is an association made up of approximately 300 artists and their goal is to continuously present new resonating artworks.
Artist.
Goldin + Senneby is a Stockholm based artist duo. Ranked 11 in Sweden, and 1866 globally, there is no denying the ingenuity of their projects.
Take their 2026 proposed project, Eternal Employment, a life-long employment position will be offered,with no responsibilities other than checking-in and out at the start and end of each working day at Korsvägen train station in Gothenburg, Sweden. The position is paid for by the return on capital of the original funding supplied for the project. A project of unending duration which could provide an equally endless myriad of interesting occurrences and observations. We’re very intrigued to see where the future takes this duo.
Curator.
Jonatan Habib Engqvist is a curator and author with a background in Philosophy and Aesthetic theory. He is ‘Editor in mischief’ of the online journal tsnoK.se, and has just become Editor of Ord&Bild. He collaborated with the Nordic Art Association to establish the Curatorial Residency in Stockholm (CRIS) which was conceived in 2015 as a free-space for curators.
In 2019 he was commissioned by them to curate the VR Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale– a working barge with a VR artwork Medusa by Venetian artist Sara Tirelli.
And that completes our brief exploration of arts in the seventh happiest country in the world (according to Forbes). We encourage you to dive deeper into the art of Sweden, or any other country that tempts you, and see what new discoveries you will make.
Let’s make history happen.
The Artfacts Team