‘We don't think it should be controversial to talk about these subjects’: Bonniers Konsthall opens exhibition on art as antifascist resistance ahead of Swedish election

Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm is presenting The Defeated: The Aesthetics of Resistance 2026, an exhibition on antifascist art and cultural resistance featuring 19 international artists and running until 8 November. Opening two weeks before Sweden’s parliamentary election scheduled for 13 September, the show is framed as a response to the global rise of far-right movements and Sweden’s current political landscape under Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s centre-right minority government, which has been backed since 2022 by the Sweden Democrats. Curated by Joanna Nordin with researcher Kim West and curator François Piron, the exhibition draws on Peter Weiss’s books The Defeated (1948) and the three-volume The Aesthetics of Resistance (1975–81), and includes eight newly commissioned works. Among them are Kateryna Lysovenko’s Madness of Fascism (2026), a painting of a “fascist” family set against human organs, and Ali Cherri’s hybrid sculpture The Summoner, Grafting (2026).

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