March 29 – october 19 2025
Wang & Söderström
Experience the exhibition Sharp Feelers – Soft Antennas with the art and design duo Wang & Söderström will open, and discover their works characterized by sensuous forms and playful design.
Experience the exhibition Sharp Feelers – Soft Antennas with the art and design duo Wang & Söderström will open, and discover their works characterized by sensuous forms and playful design.
How can nature provide us with clues to navigate a world where the digital evolves into something as complex as life itself? In the exhibition Sharp Feelers – Soft Antennas, they explore what it signifies for our senses that we are moving towards an increasingly digital future. Can feelers, tentacles and antennas provide us with clues to how we can relate to the digital using our sensory organs?
Sensuous forms and playful design characterise Wang & Söderström’s work which moves between art, design and digital craft. Through film, sculpture and interactive installations, they explore themes such as nature, body and technology.In their work, the duo creates new synthetic realities. They highlight questions about how the digital interface affects us humans and how ecology, material and senses change during the digital advances of our time.
The exhibition is Wang & Söderström’s first solo exhibition at a Swedish museum and is on display from March 29 – October 19, 2025.
The exhibition is made possible with support from The Danish Arts Foundation.
Top image: Wang & Söderström, Sharp Feelers – Soft Antennas.
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Anny Wang and Tim Söderström are a Swedish art and design duo based in Copenhagen. Wang & Söderström’s work has been shown internationally at venues including Ars Electronica in Linz, The Design Museum in London, ArkDes in Stockholm and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. Their most recent exhibition Techno Mythologies in Copenhagen was recognised as one of the most extraordinary exhibitions of the year in 2024 by the Danish Arts Foundation. In 2023 they won the Lumen Art Prize and The Biennale Award of Crafts & Design, and in 2021 they received the Danish Arts Foundation’s three-year working grant.
Anny Wang and Tim Söderström. Photo: Carl Ander
The Jacquard tapestry Känselspröt (Feelers) (2025) depicts an imaginary landscape filled with the sensory organs of various species, as well as satellite and radio antennas.
Inspired by the Baroque Chamber at the Röhsska Museum, Wang & Söderström have, for the first time produced a textile work with hand-embroidered details. The contrasting and romanticised landscapes of the Baroque era were the key inspiration for the tapestry’s dramatic motif.
With lush greenery and mythological animals, the woven Verdure tapestry of the 17th century served as a model for Känselspröt. The fascination with the wonders of nature in the 17th century led to the great interest in botany in the 18th century. The naturalist Carl Linnaeus categorised nature into three kingdoms: minerals, animals and plants.
Wang & Söderström challenge this system by designing a digital motif in which the boundaries between living beings and technology dissolve.
Photo: Carl Ander
The screen 5+sinnen (5+senses) consists of panels featuring interpretations of objects from the Röhsska Museum’s collections. The first five relate to the human senses. In the final panel, Wang & Söderström playfully explore a sixth undiscovered sense. The motifs are brought to life through augmented reality (AR).
In this piece too, Wang & Söderström draw inspiration from the 17th and 18th centuries fascination with nature and its systems. In the 18th century, when global exchanges intensified, the body and the senses were seen as essential tools for experiencing and understanding the world around us. The panels present objects from the museum’s collections as carriers of 18th-century global sensory experiences: coffee, sugar, spices and tobacco, whose history is intertwined with trade, colonialism and cultural encounters across continents.
5+senses also reflect on screens’ changing form and function throughout design history. Folding screens and fire screens protected against unwanted gazes and heat. Today, digital screens connect the private and the public with a third virtual sphere.
Photo: Carl Ander
The development of AI is often hailed as the great revolution of the digital era. However, increased production and efficiency raise concerns about environmental and social impacts. Wang & Söderström borrow the term “snake oil” for their 3D printed aluminium urn. The term has historically been used to describe fake medicines or false marketing. Snake Oil refers to AI’s two-headed status, as the serpent symbolises both healing and destruction, as well as deception and temptation.
Photo: Carl Ander