Estonian artist Anu Põder gets first solo show in Sweden at Moderna Museet Malmö

A solo exhibition of the late Estonian sculptor Anu Põder has opened at the Malmö branch of Moderna Museet, Sweden's national museum of modern and contemporary art. Põder died in 2013 at the age of 66, and this is the first time her work has been shown in a solo presentation in Sweden. The exhibition will later move to Stockholm and then to Finland.

Unconventional materials

The show brings together around 20 works borrowed from the Art Museum of Estonia, the Tartu Art Museum and the Anu Põder Estate. It also includes five drawings from the estate that have never been exhibited before.

Born in 1947, Põder developed much of her practice during the Soviet occupation of Estonia, when sculpture was dominated by more durable materials and established traditions. She instead used fragile, familiar substances, including plaster, textiles, wax, plastic, soap and fat. The human body stayed central to her work even when absent, suggested by an imprint, an empty space or the shape of an object. The exhibition follows how her interests shifted from bodily experience and the impermanence of life towards consumption and capitalism, particularly after Estonia restored its independence in 1991.

Andreas Nilsson, curator at Moderna Museet Malmö, first saw Põder's work at a 2017 retrospective at the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn. He said he was struck by her use of everyday, fragile materials to convey both the vulnerability and the strength of the body.

Recognition after her death

Põder was influential among younger Estonian artists, but wider international recognition came mainly after her death. Since the 2017 retrospective, her sculptures have appeared at the Venice Biennale in 2022 and at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris in 2026. In 2021, the Tate museum in the UK acquired a version of Tongues (1998), a sculpture made of soap.

A catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with contributions from Anders Härm, a curator at Kumu, and Ingrid Orman of Finland's EMMA Art Museum.

The exhibition runs in Malmö until 21 February 2027, then in Stockholm from 10 April to 6 June 2027. A further presentation is planned at the EMMA Art Museum in Espoo, Finland, in 2028.