Malmö Konsthall 50 Years & Drain The Öresund!

On February 8, 2025, Malmö Konsthall will open two exhibitions simultaneously: “Malmö Konsthall 50 Years” and “Drain the Öresund!”. The anniversary exhibition about Malmö Konsthall’s exhibitions, building, and history will run throughout the year in part of the exhibition hall, alongside other exhibitions. The “Drain the Öresund!” exhibition highlights artists and issues that define the art scene in the region.

Malmö Konsthall 50 Years

Next year, Malmö Konsthall celebrates its 50th anniversary by highlighting the konsthall’s long and exciting history. The exhibition “Malmö Konsthall 50 Years” will span the entire year of 2025, offering a comprehensive retrospective of past exhibitions and a presentation of the building’s architecture. Klas Anshelm created a timeless exhibition space with a unique ability to transform and adapt for each new exhibition. The exhibition space has been appreciated by both visitors and artists who have exhibited at Malmö Konsthall over the past fifty years. The exhibition will run alongside other exhibitions throughout the year. It will have a dynamic format and will be continuously expanded over the course of the exhibition period.

Drain The Öresund! 

The exhibition Drain The Öresund! brings together artists living on both sides of the bridge, and examines the region as a site of socio-cultural, ecological, technological, economic, and political entanglements at local and global levels. Key to the exhibition is a critical view of infrastructure, the production of interrelated systems and ‘bridges’ that facilitate exchanges over space and the transfer of information between different domains. The exhibition will run from February 8, 2025, to May 4, 2025.  

In 1953, the Scanian industrialist Ruben Rausing made a preposterous proposal: drain the Öresund, thereby providing new space for Malmo and Copenhagen to expand and meet in the middle. As the founder of the Swedish liquid food packaging company Tetra Pak, Rausing saw the seabed of this borderland as a site for development, manufacturing new territory for agricultural and urbanization projects, and establishing contact across previous divides. This idea of Rausing has been the starting point for the curator of the exhibition, Post Brothers, and leading up to the exhibition title. 

“Drain The Öresund!” explores the hopes and failures of mass societal transformation, digging into the relationships between the public and private, internal and external worlds, and between images, abstractions, and lived reality. It also examines the role of human labor in the modification of our environments, and how these transform our identities and relationships in turn.