Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg: A Place of Opportunity and Transformation

The National Nordic Museum’s Barbro Osher Gallery metamorphosizes into a whimsical and mysterious world of the artists’ creation. Visitors enter a large-scale immersive installation titled The Stone Garden (2023), a cold and inhospitable environment, yet one that supports plant life. Colorful flowers bloom from boulders and branches. Elsewhere in the exhibition are ovoid and spherical sculptures of eggs and moons. These objects resemble people with facial features and limbs. They are more than sculptures; they are actors portraying human characteristics in stop-motion animation films that are screened in the exhibition space.

Nathalie Djurberg creates sculptures and films to explore fantasies and fears, personal secrets and universal truths. She has selected stop-motion animation to express ideas that are otherwise inexplicable. Over the course of their twenty-year collaboration, Hans Berg has composed complementary soundscapes for the animations. The three short films on view are Dark Side of the Moon (2017), A Pancake Moon (2022), and Howling at the Moon (2022), contemporary fairy tales set in an ominous forest with a curious cast of characters. The exhibition’s tongue-in-cheek title, A Place of Opportunity and Transformation, references the films’ setting, a fantastical forest in which the narratives’ protagonists resist and fall victim to opportunistic predators on their journey or search in vain for answers to life’s great mysteries. 

For the first time, the National Nordic Museum offers a preview of this special exhibition at the 2024 Seattle Art Fair (July 25 – 28).

1. The films and sculptures in this exhibition explore mature themes, which may not be suitable for everyone. We ask that you please keep this in mind before entering with children.

1. Please be aware of your surroundings; this gallery contains delicate artworks on the floor and extending from the walls.

1. Be prepared for theatrical lighting, as sculptures are displayed alongside projected films.

1. To ensure everyone has a great experience, we kindly ask that no more than 40 visitors enter the gallery at a time. Thank you!
   
   

Gallery Map

Nathalie Djurberg was born in 1978 in Lysekil, Sweden. She studied art at Folkuniversitetet and Hovedskous Art School in Gothenburg, Sweden before earning her MFA from Malmö Art Academy in 2002. Hans Berg was born in 1978 in Rättvik, Sweden and is a self-taught musician, who began playing the drums at age fourteen. Djurberg and Berg met in Berlin in 2004 and have been working together ever since.

The artists’ collaborations have been exhibited widely around the world. In 2009, Djurberg & Berg presented their installation The Experiment at the 53rd Venice Biennial "Making Worlds" curated by Daniel Birnbaum where they were awarded the Silver Lion for Best Emerging Artists.

For a full list of the artists' works and exhibitions, click here. Learn more about the pair's creative process in the below Art21 documentary.

Djurberg & Berg: A Place of Opportunity and Transformation has been organized by the National Nordic Museum’s Chief Curator, Leslie Anderson, in collaboration with the artists. Artwork and gallery images courtesy Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum, the artists, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles, Lisson Gallery, London, Shanghai. Portrait of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg by Wynrich Zlomke.