About the exhibition

The exhibition presents works by five artists: Absalon, Stina Fors, Hassan Khan, NUG and Öberg/Arvefjord. Through installation, performance, painting, sound, and video works, the artists explore ways knowledge can be conveyed. Visitors are met with various expressions of bodies in motion, voices and rhythms. Most works are newly commissioned for the exhibition.

From its position within Stockholm University, Accelerator aims to draw attention to knowledge systems that have long been excluded from, or subordinated to, academic knowledge. Knowledge that is shaped by the body, everyday life, heritage and living conditions—lived and experience-based knowledge—is often marginalised, despite being fundamental to how people navigate the world. 

The Owl of Minerva also highlights tacit knowledge—the kind of knowledge that is difficult to put into words but evident in action and practical skill. Above all, it emphasises intuition and rhythm as alternative ways of understanding and experiencing the world. Intuition manifests itself as a form of immediate knowing, beyond the strictly rational, whilst rhythm points towards recurring patterns, movements and temporalities—both in the body and in the surroundings. Together, these experiences broaden the understanding of knowledge as not solely conceptual but also involving emotional engagement and lived experience.

Participating artists

Absalon

Meir Eshel (Absalon) was born in Israel in 1964. Upon his arrival in Paris in 1987 he started calling himself Absalon and enrolled in Christian Boltanski’s workshop at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. In 1990 he moved to a studio in Boulogne, built by Le Corbusier for the artist Jacques Lipchitz in 1924. Between 1991 and 1993 Absalon created his Cellules (cells) as small architectural forms which evoke monastic cells and relate to the dimensions of the artist’s own body and mental space. The form of Absalon’s Cellules is reminiscent of the modernist architectural styles of Le Corbusier, Bauhaus, De Stijl and the Russian constructivism. Apart from architectural structures and models, Absalon’s work encompasses films and drawings that from a personal perspective, explore questions of dwelling, security, and self-imposed isolation. At the age of 29, Absalon died of AIDS in Paris, in October 1993. During his short career, Absalon exhibited at institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1991) and took part in dOCUMENTA IX (1992) and at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1993). KunstWerke in Berlin (2010), IVAM in Valencia and CAPC in Bordeaux (both 2021) dedicated exhibitions to his work.

Stina Fors

Stina Fors (b. 1989, Sweden) is a performance artist, choreographer, and experimental vocalist whose practice centres on the voice — its power, its failures, and everything that slips between the two. Working through solo and durational performance, she uses voice, rhythm, and embodiment to explore what happens when speech exceeds intention: as pressure, excess, noise, or unexpected revelation.

Her performances are humorous, raw, and risky — built on improvisation, punk energy, and agenuine appetite for the unpredictable. Key works include A Mouthful of Tongues (ventriloquism, vocal distortion), Stina Force (live drumming and vocal improvisation), and Answer Me, Pythia (a durational encounter with oracles, uncertainty, and belief). She has presented work internationally, including at the Venice Biennale and the Gwangju Biennale, and is the recipient of the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance. She studied at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam. Stina Fors is based in Vienna.

Hassan Khan

Hassan Khan (b. 1975, London, UK) is an artist, musician and writer. His work engages with familiar, shared conditions and undisclosed personal references, creating a form that gives rise to imagined communities. This form raises fundamental questions, channels conditions simmering under the surface, seduces and alienates, challenges expectations, and helps to re-articulate our experiences with shifting power structures. Working across video, photography, performance and installation, Khan views each medium not as a field to be mastered but rather a source of possibility, potential and learning. 

Khan was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2017. Recent solo exhibitions include Little Castles, Portikus, Frankfurt (2025); GESTUS, Cukrarna, Ljubljana (2025); Blind Ambition, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2022); and The Keys to the Kingdom, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2019). Khan’s An Anthology of Published and Unpublished Writings is published by Koenig Books and his album SUPERSTRUCTURE EP is released by The Vinyl Factory. 

NUG

The artist known by the pseudonym NUG (b. 1973, SE) has been an influential figure on Stockholm’s graffiti scene since the late 1980s. Famously elusive, he has attained near-legendary status within a culture that demands both discretion and boldness. His name, along with his involvement in crews such as VIM (Vandals in Motion), has circulated widely, cementing his position as one of Sweden’s most prominent graffiti artists. For a broader public, NUG first gained significant attention through his controversial MFA graduation film Territorial Pissing (2008), which provoked outspoken criticism from Sweden’s then Minister of Culture and ignited a national debate on the boundaries between vandalism and art in the public space.

Central to NUG’s practice is the notion of motion. Graffiti’s historically illicit nature necessitates speed and precision, which leave tangible traces in the work itself. His gestural strokes and splatters recall aspects of Abstract Expressionism, a movement firmly established in the western art historical canon, where the artist’s physical movement directly informs the outcome. Moving between these contexts, NUG’s work occupies a charged position at the intersection of the institutional and the underground.

Anna Öberg (Öberg/Arvefjord)

Anna Öberg (SE) is a dancer and choreographer working at the intersection of choreography, sound and spatial practices. In her artistic work, she draws on her background in Swedish folk dance and an interest in how the genre’s physical and social processes can be communicated through the position of art, beyond the simplified stereotypes and external attributes often associated with the genre. The improvisational interplay between music and movement has always been central to Öberg’s work, and she has frequently returned to the theme of rhythm as a driving force, passing the baton as a concept, and the interactive, multisensory encounter between the audience and the work as part of the choreographic material.

In 2015 Öberg was awarded an MFA degree in Choreography at Stockholm University of Arts (SKH), as the first traditional dancer in its history. She also holds a Post Master from The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, OPI Lab. Her stage works has been presented at e.g. Dansens Hus, MDT, Norrlandsoperan, Skissernas Museum, Moderna museet, Dansstationen, Riksteatern, Dansehallerne in Denmark, Rosendal Teater Trondheim, Riksscenen Oslo and Brut Imagetanz Vienna.

Elize Arvefjord (Öberg/Arvefjord)

Elize Arvefjord is a composer and sound artist based in Stockholm. Her artistic practice explores the inherent materiality of sound and how it can be used to investigate the boundaries between worlds, objects, and bodies. She has composed music for productions at institutions including the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten), Norrdans, Stockholm City Theatre, Riksteatern, and Swedish Radio. In 2013, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Sound Design for Performing Arts from SKH and is currently studying in the Artistic Interdisciplinary Master Programme at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. She is also a member of the performing arts collective Nyxxx, where she collaborates with the other members to create aesthetic events for participatory audiences.

Credits

Curators: Richard Julin and Therese Kellner

Thank you to Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art and The Robert Weil Family Foundation.