A Hole in the Real – Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna | Maria Lind

            Cities are more than concrete infrastructures designed by architects, urban planners or policy-makers. Artists and creatives have much to contribute to the collective imagination and affective experience of urban life. These intangible yet powerful dimensions can foster attachment and meaning – or provoke alienation and exclusion. Art occupies an ambivalent position in this dynamic: while it can create spaces of encounter, reveal hidden stories, and challenge dominant narratives, it is also increasingly instrumentalised to serve political, economic or branding agendas.

A Hole in the Real: Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna

In the midst of one of the most spectacular urban experiments in the world, a small museum of contemporary art is taking its lead from local, regional, national and international art.

Kin Museum of Contemporary Art is located in the town hall of the mining town of Kiruna, 200 km north of the arctic circle. It is the first building in "new Kiruna" five km from "old Kiruna" which is slowly but steadily vanishing due to the expansion of the iron ore mine. In the talk, director Maria Lind will discuss how the museum is working in this highly charged context, through its three multiyear inquries, "The critical zone", "Women in the north" and "Hand, heart and brain", and its mediation activities.

Portrait of Maria Lind by artist Bernd Krauss

Maria Lind

Maria Lind is a curator, writer and educator from Stockholm. She is currently the director of the Kin Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna. From 2020 to 2023 she was serving as the counsellor of culture at the embassy of Sweden, Moscow. She was the director of Stockholm’s Tensta konsthall 2011-18, the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008-2010) and director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005-2007). From 2002-2004 she was the director of Kunstverein München and in 1998, co-curator of Europe’s itinerant biennial, Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg. In 2015 she curated Future Light for the first Vienna Biennial, and in 2019 she co-curated the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara. She has taught widely since the early 1990s, including as professor of artistic research at the Art Academy in Oslo 2015-18. Currently she is a lecturer at Konstfack’s CuratorLab. She has contributed widely to newspapers, magazines, catalogues and other publications. She is the 2009 recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. In 2010 Selected Maria Lind Writing was published by Sternberg Press, and Seven Years: The Rematerialization Art from 2011 to 2017 appeared in the fall of 2019. In 2021, Konstringar: Vad gör samtidskonsten? was published by Natur & Kultur. Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden (2021) and The New Model (2020) are two publications reflecting long-term projects at Tensta konsthall, both published by the art center and Sternberg Press.