Klara Lidén (born 1979 in Stockholm, Sweden) is a Swedish contemporary artist who lives and works in Berlin and New York City. She is known for installations and video performances that engage with specific architectural and urban environments.
Early life and education
Lidén grew up as the younger of two sisters in suburban Stockholm. She studied architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology (2000–2004) in Stockholm, attended the Berlin University of the Arts in 2003, and completed a degree at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm between 2004 and 2007.
Artistic practice
Lidén’s multidisciplinary work spans installation, video, performance, sculpture, and photography. Frequently she uses discarded or everyday materials to construct site‑specific interventions that comment on urban space, social norms, and the relationship between public and private realms. Representative projects include:
- Early installations – a house built from reclaimed materials on a riverbank; an alternative free postal system; blank white flyers applied over commercial advertisements.
- 2005 Reena Spaulings tower – a small elevated room assembled from scavenged cardboard boxes and thin iron pipes, presented as a “playhouse‑retreat” within a storefront gallery.
- 2007 Moderna Museet – relocation of the entire contents of her apartment into the museum’s exhibition space.
- Venice Biennale 2009 (Nordic pavilion) – creation of a fictional teenager’s bedroom featuring an emergency axe and a wall opening.
- 2012 Reena Spaulings “Blue Wall” – installation of a blue wall dividing the gallery, revealing a room filled with eighty used Christmas trees collected from city streets.
- Poster Paintings series (late 2000s) – multilayered works composed of glued fragments of Berlin advertisement posters topped with a white sheet.
- Video works – Paralyzed (2003), documenting an improvised dance on a Stockholm commuter train; The Myth of Progress (Moonwalk) (2008), showing the artist moonwalking through Manhattan streets at night; Techno Battle (2012), a collaborative performance with her sister Hanna involving staged confrontations with broken technology.
- Photographic interventions – climbing down a manhole (Untitled (Down), 2011) and standing on a wooden post in a city port (Untitled (Pier), 2013).
Exhibitions and recognition
Since her debut in 2003, Lidén has exhibited widely. Group shows have included the Urban Gallery (Berlin), Art in General (New York), Stockholm Art‑Fair, and Outfest (Los Angeles). Solo exhibitions have been mounted at institutions such as Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Reena Spaulings Fine Art (New York), Serpentine Galleries (London, 2010), Galerie Neu (Berlin, 2015), Le Consortium (Dijon, 2015), and WIELS (Brussels, 2015). She made her solo museum debut in the United States at a major venue in the early 2010s.
Critical reception
Critics note Lidén’s ability to transform mundane urban materials into reflective sculptural environments, highlighting tensions between public space, personal experience, and institutional contexts. Her work is described as simultaneously playful and conceptually rigorous, often employing humor to interrogate social conventions.
This entry is based on publicly available biographical and exhibition information.
