Tuija Lindström, The hand, 1983 Repro photo: Moderna Museet © Tuija Lindström

Queer gazes in Sleepless Nights

Guided tour

15.12 2023

Stockholm

Come along on a guided tour in the collection exhibition “Sleepless Nights – From the 1980s in Moderna Museet Collection” focusing on identity, gaze and queer lives. Cultural Scholar Emil Åkerö talks about artists such as Matts Leiderstam, Tuija Lindström, David Wojnarowicz and Robert Mapplethorpe.

In the exhibition “Sleepless Nights” we see how key events of the 1980s are represented artistically in photography, sculpture, painting and film. This includes the fall of the Berlin Wall and the launching of the Internet. The AIDS crisis became very palpable in art and culture contexts, and many artists were strongly affected by both the disease and the homophobia that followed.

Using artworks by artists such as Matts Leiderstam, Tuija Lindström, David Wojnarowicz and Robert Mapplethorpe, Cultural Scholar Emil Åkerö shows how the artists portrayed same-sex desire and the theme of HIV.

photo of two standing boards in exhibition room
Matts Leiderstam, Reconstruction, 1989–2016 Photo: Tobias Fischer/Moderna Museet Bildupphovsrätt 2023