Yung Lean Has Joined the Art World—Now His Work Is Heading to Auction

Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, the Swedish rapper better known to a generation of internet-raised listeners as Yung Lean, will stage the first exhibition devoted entirely to his visual art next month. 

Collected Works 2016–2026 opens on 25 September at Norra Bangården at Torsgatan 22 in central Stockholm, and will bring together a decade of oil painting, collage, works on paper, sculpture, ceramics, dioramas and film, the vast majority of which have never been exhibited publicly before.

“Ever since I can remember I dreamed of colours,” Håstad said in a statement. “Just like my songs, the work is made through a stream of consciousness. I go where the hand takes me. My paintings mean nothing and also everything.” 

Håstad, who turned 30 in July, has spent more than a decade as one of the more improbable exports of Swedish pop, since his track Ginseng Strip 2002 went viral in 2013, making him a founding figure of the SoundCloud rap movement. His more recent albums, however, have been released under the name Jonatan Leandoer96, with Collected Works seemingly underlining this desire to close the era that marked his rise to fame.

On 10 August, the performer posted to Instagram an image of him as a child surrounded by wooden painted figures, hinting that he has always been an “artist” in the traditional sense. However, Håstad is entirely self-taught, and there is no external curator or gallery attached to his show: he selected the works, designed the exhibition and oversaw the installation himself. 

Images released ahead of the opening show blobby ceramic figures (El Jefe), a diorama titled Gubben i Lådan, or jack-in-the-box, and crude paintings of masked figures in landscape. Among the latter are Perfekt Dejt and Vitabergsparken, depicting a well-known hang-out spot for his own musical and artistic collective, Sad Boys.

Collected Works’ space in Stockholm’s former gasworks, will be divided into a sequence of environments, among them a salon, a television room and a screening room, with filtered daylight, haze, sculptural seating and temporary architectural interventions folded into the work itself.

The screening room premieres a new short film, executive produced by and starring Håstad, which follows two lovers along the back roads of rural Sweden. This marks a continuation of the rapper’s foray into the film industry, following the announcement of his role alongside collaborator Charli XCX in the upcoming Romain Gavras film, Sacrifice. 

Following the show, a selection of Håstad’s works, primarily sculptures, will be offered in an international online auction with Bukowskis, the Nordic region’s leading auction house, which was acquired by Bonhams in 2022. The rapper will achieve this without the usual gallery representation—his fame creating access to the same potentially lucrative sales that have long appealed to other aspiring pop-stars-cum-artists. 

Collected Works 2016–2026 (25 September–11 October) at Norra Bangården, Torsgatan 22, Stockholm