ELMGREEN & DRAGSET

Background and Early Years

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset began collaborating as artists in Copenhagen in 1995, a partnership that has spanned three decades and centres on the intersection of art, architecture, and social critique. Elmgreen previously worked in poetry and theatre, while Dragset trained in theatre before joining the contemporary art scene. Today, they live and work in Berlin, producing works that challenge the politics of belonging and everyday realities.

Elmgreen & Dragset Artworks

Elmgreen & Dragset’s practice encompasses sculpture, installation, and performance, with a focus on recontextualising everyday objects and spaces to critique cultural norms. They are particularly known for using humour and architectural interventions to provoke dialogue about collective identity, intimacy, and the absurdity of modern life.

Seminal Works and Developments

• Short Cut (2003) presents a Fiat Uno and camper trailer as if emerging from the floor, displacing familiar objects into surreal situations.
• Prada Marfa (2005), a permanent, full-scale replica of a boutique sited in the remote Texan desert, subverts luxury branding and landscape.
• The Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime (2008) remains a prominent public monument in Berlin’s Tiergarten park.
• Van Gogh’s Ear (2016), a monumental swimming pool installed upright at Rockefeller Center, New York, exemplifies their signature fusion of the uncanny and theatrical.
• The Hive, Moynihan Train Hall, New York, 2020

Elmgreen & Dragset’s Life Rings, Fig. 3, which was shown in Frieze Sculpture in London in 2025, comprises a monumental stack of steel lifebuoys improbably balanced to rise over four metres, transforming the form of a rescue device into a powerful visual anchor. The sculpture subverts expectations by rendering the buoyant rings in heavy stainless steel, magnifying their symbolism and raising questions of value, care, and inaccessibility.

In 2025, their immersive solo show The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome at Pace Gallery, Los Angeles, the duo’s first in LA, explored the psychological and perceptual distortions of scale through doubling and resizing.

Select Awards and Accolades

• Frieze Sculpture, 2025, presenting Life Rings (2023) with Pace Gallery.
• B.Z.-Kulturpreis, Berlin, 2020
• Robert Jacobsen Prize, 2021
• Special Mention, 53rd Venice Biennale for The Collectors, 2009
• Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst, Berlin, 2003

Elmgreen & Dragset Exhibitions

Elmgreen & Dragset have presented major institutional exhibitions worldwide and are represented by leading galleries regularly showing their work around the globe. You can follow the artists on Ocula to be updated regularly on their exhibitions.

Select Solo Exhibitions at Institutions

• Spaces, Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024–25
• L’Addition, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 2024–25
• Bonne Chance, Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, 2023–24
• Useless Bodies?, Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2022
• Sculptures, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas, 2019–20
• This Is How We Bite Our Tongue, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2018–19
• Powerless Structures, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, 2016
• The Well Fair, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2016
• Aéroport Mille Plateaux, PLATEAU, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, 2015
• Tomorrow, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2013–14
• The One & The Many, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2011
• Celebrity – The One & The Many, ZKM Museum of Modern Art, Karlsruhe, 2010
• Trying to Remember What We Once Wanted to Forget, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain, 2009
• The Welfare Show, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2006
• Somewhere in the World It’s Four O’Clock, Tate Modern, London, 2004
• Powerless Structures, Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich, 2001

More Reading

Elmgreen & Dragset’s work, and exhibitions have been featured in leading publications including Ocula Magazine. You can read interviews with the artist on Ocula here and here, and follow them on Ocula to keep up to date with new articles.

Elmgreen & Dragset FAQs

Ocula | 2025