At the beginning of the year, we invited seven artists to make a new work based on an idea about the invitation. It was a sparse and open, but specific invitation that served as the starting point for the investigation at hand: an attempt both to make implicit infrastructures within the art world more concrete and to make visible larger social structures that depend on a form of invitation in order to function. But it was also just an invitation to accept an invitation to have fun. With the invitation, each artist received this letter from us:
Dear artist,
By this letter, we invite you to participate in a group show titled Invitation.
We think a lot about the invitation. As an opening, a stretched out hand, a tool in an economy, a premise, a gesture. We wonder how you think about the invitation.
In the fall of 2026, we invite seven artists to make something, one work, suggesting these thoughts. With the acceptance of this invitation comes a production fee of 5000 DKK to produce your work, which we encourage you not to exceed in material costs, alongside an exhibition fee of 6000 DKK.
The exhibition will open on 27 August 2026, and we would need the work to arrive in Copenhagen by 17 August 2026. The exhibition period will run until 24 October 2026.
The invited artists are Wisrah C. V. de R. Celestino, Eliyah Mesayer, Henriette Heise, coyote, Rasmus Myrup, Alexandrino da Silva, and Yi Ten Lai.
We very much look forward to your reply.
Please RSVP by 10 February 2026.
All the best,
All all all
Wisrah C. V. de R. Celestino spent the production fee on making a new, unlimited work: securing their own living expenses for as long as possible. coyote has followed a methodology close to their practice and worked with the invitation as a work structure, where the invitation of other artists becomes the work. The artist Bengt af Klintberg, for example, has sent an envelope to coyote c/o All all all, following the score: Open an empty envelope with both hands and talk loudly into it. Then close the envelope quickly and post it to anyone whom it may concern. Yi Ten Lai’s porcelain pieces are the survivors from a performance that now tricks those invited into being extra careful when entering and moving through the exhibition, with only a few empty spots on the floor where you have to tiptoe through the work. Rasmus Myrup has installed a lot of paper bags in the ceiling that are unreachable: the goodie bag you will never have. George Binda Nabarungu Celeste Alexandrino Gabriel Ferreira Da Silva Hallas invites you into the chaos of the poetic home. Eliyah Mesayer invites you to take a fortune card, but while doing so, you may consider what it means to be invited, what work has gone into writing the oracle fortunes, and maybe you would want to give something back. Henriette Heise was fascinated by non-stop breaking news coverage from Washington, when Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenlandic Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt met with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It was never made clear who had invited whom, was it a self-invitation?
