Press release -
Soft Robots extended to 2026
Copenhagen Contemporary is delighted to announce that Soft Robots, one of the institution’s most visited exhibitions, has been extended until April 19, 2026. The enthusiasm surrounding the show reflects a growing global interest in how technology shapes our emotional and cultural lives, and the strong public response arrives as CC approaches its ten-year anniversary in early 2026.
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“The exhibition is overwhelming in many ways, but it’s one you simply have to see”
Kulturinformation
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“… fortunately, here in the city we have an art center like Copenhagen Contemporary, which is always willing to provide an exhibition space for experimental work. This is also true this year, where Soft Robots is one of the most fascinating exhibitions of the year.”
Berlingske
Soft Robots brings together fifteen international artists and duos who explore life inside a rapidly shifting technological ecology. Their works respond to a moment marked by artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and the rise of the digital double that shadows us online. Hope and fear often collide when new technologies appear, and the exhibition uses art as a space where these tensions can be examined.
Across two large halls, visitors encounter installations, interactive environments, and digital experiments created specifically for the show. Czech artist Klára Hosnedlová opens the exhibition with imposing cocoons that suggest transformation. Ayoung Kim imagines a future Seoul guided by an algorithm named Dancemaster. A.A. Murakami presents a meditative room filled with giant machine-generated bubbles. Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst contribute an AI work that generates shifting digital versions of Holly, raising questions about authorship and control in a world where personal identity becomes data.
Many of the artists draw on cultural traditions that do not separate nature from technology. Ideas from Shinto and other pan-Asian traditions appear throughout the exhibition and open a wider view on the possibility of an animated and spiritual presence in non-human forms. These positions intersect with a Western lineage that reaches back to Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Nightingale, written at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
The exhibition highlights art as one of the few remaining spaces for reflection in a culture shaped by constant acceleration, and it invites visitors to consider the breath, the voice, and the fragile line between human and machine in the speculative landscapes of the future.
“A sense of wonder pervades CC’s industrial halls—it’s a refreshing antidote to the doom and gloom so often associated with new technologies. Soft Robots may not challenge the potential threats of machines, but it demonstrates the power of art to ignite our curiosity.”
Stir
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“Soft Robots speaks to both nerds and aesthetes, offering a window into the future”
Kulturkupeen
Soft Robots presents several works originating from Collide Copenhagen, a three-year artist residency programme created jointly by Copenhagen Contemporary and Arts at CERN.
Artists featured in the exhibition
A.A. Murakami (UK/Japan), Alice Bucknell (US), Ayoung Kim (South Korea), Daria Martin (US), Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst (US/UK), Joan Heemskerk (Netherlands), Jonas Kjeldgaard Sørensen (Denmark), Klára Hosnedlová (Czechia), Martyna Marciniak (Poland), Nanna Debois Buhl (Denmark), Rhoda Ting & Mikkel Bojesen (Austrailia/Denmark), Silas Inoue (Denmark/Japan), Takashi Murakami (Japan), WangShui (US), Yunchul Kim (South Korea)
Curated by: Marie Laurberg, Line Wium, and Rasmus Wegner
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Copenhagen Contemporary (CC) er Københavns internationale kunstcenter, der viser installationskunst skabt af samtidskunstens verdensstjerner og nye talenter. CC har til huse i den prægtige gamle B&W-svejsehal istandsat af arkitekt Dorte Mandrup, der med sine i alt 7.000 m2 smukke industrihaller har pladsen til at udstille de teknisk og pladskrævende formater, som mange samtidskunstnere arbejder i: Store totalinstallationer, performancekunst og monumentale videoværker. Det er kunst, man ofte kan gå ind i og sanse med hele kroppen.
