201,300,000 Years Ago 2024. Raimo Saarinen.
Welcome to 2026! We are now entering a new phase for Art Lab Gnesta: This is an initiative that has grown over a long period of time together with our young participants and marks the beginning of a new era.
In 2026, Johanna Billing will continue her work on a new production based on young people’s experiments with sound, silence and listening, culminating in an exhibition in the fall. We are planning an evening in March with performance, poetry and music, as well as a major spring exhibition with new works by Aron Fogelström and Raimo Saarinen. We are initiating collaborations with The Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary, publishing books, and developing our collaboration with researchers at SLU, artists, writers, etc.
At the same time, our art-driven institution is undergoing a transformation. In 2026, our operations will be fully underway in Gnesta, while we gradually establish a presence in Mölnbo, where we will move into Fagernäs in 2027. This building, dating from 1890, has great cultural and historical value. It was constructed to supply Stockholm with tuberculosis-free milk and, in recent decades, has housed Anticimex’s rat poison production, but is now set to become a palace for art, artists, and the general public, with several thousand square meters of indoor space and a large park. A move not only in geography, but also in our artistic and institutional position.
Fagernäs, Mölnbo.
We are acquiring a new conceptual container for our cross-border activities, six kilometers as the crow flies from Bryggerihuset in Gnesta. This is our next step in a long-term practice where place and artistic processes have always been intertwined. Fagernäs carries a complex history from food production to poison manufacturing; it is part of our human heritage and now becomes our artistic field, where ecological wounds, wildness and more-than-human relationships are at the center.
2026 will be a year of transition between two places and two states. A transition where art is the driving force and the state.
Art Lab Gnesta is shedding its skin and steps into the era!