Klara Liden

MoMA PS1 will present the largest mid-career survey to date of artist Klara Liden (Swedish, b. 1979), bringing into focus her longstanding exploration of urban infrastructure in the public sphere. Featuring work rarely seen in the US from the past three decades of her practice, alongside new works created for the exhibition, the show spans the entirety of our third-floor galleries and includes large-scale installation, sculpture, architecture, video, performance, painting, and printmaking. A generation-defining artist, Liden often pilfers objects—such as junction boxes, street lamps, and advertisements—from the built environment, recontextualizing them through her singular fusion of conceptual sculpture and studio practice. The exhibition underscores Liden’s relationship to New York City, where she has periodically lived and worked over the past two decades, through the dérive, or urban wandering. Her practice reveals a dedication to urban typologies from collecting, recycling, and reusing objects that form the skins of cities; compressed cardboard boxes become benches, while stripped kiosk lights form constellations. Drawing our attention to infrastructural collapse, Liden surfaces everyday detritus to meditate on the decay of municipal systems, fading 20th-century foundations, and material precarity that pervade civic life.

Alongside the exhibition, a full-color monograph is co-published by KW, Berlin, Kunsthalle Zurich, and MoMA PS1. The book features essays and texts by Ruba Katrib, Kirsty Bell, Diedrich Diederichsen, Jordan Carter, Emma Enderby, Hendrik Folkerts, K8 Hardy, Karl Holmqvist, Fanny Hauser, Calla Henkel, John Kelsey, and Lara Scherrieble.

Klara Liden lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunstwerk, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2026), Over out und above, Kunsthalle Zürich (2025); (0, 0, 0), Galerie Neu, Berlin (2023); BABARUE at 0CTO, Marseille (2022); Auf jeden Fall, Secession, Vienna (2019); Battement battu, WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2015); Invalidenstrasse, Museion, Bolzano (2013), Bodies of Society, New Museum, New York (2012); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2011) and Serpentine Gallery, London (2010). In 2009, Liden presented Projects 89, a site-specific installation at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Hermitage Museum (2014), Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona (2011), and the Danish and Nordic Pavilions at the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2009). Liden’s work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Norway; among others. At PS1, her work was in The Gatherers (2025) and Music is a Better Noise (2006). Liden is the recipient of the Prize for Sculpture Moderna Museet (2013), a Carnegie Art Award (2012), and a special mention from the jury of the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).