Garden of Otherworldly Delights grows inspiration from the Nordic fascination for nature and more than human beings and presents the works of five Norway-based craft artists: Beatrice Alvestad Lopez, Daniela Bergschneider, Eirik Falckner, Kristina Austi and Madelen Isa Lindgren.
The Space Craft & Galleri Duerr present Garden of Otherworldly Delights during Stockholm Craft Week 2026: 30 September – 4 October.
Garden of Otherworldly Delights grows inspiration from the Nordic fascination for nature and more than human beings and presents the works of five Norway-based craft artists: Beatrice Alvestad Lopez, Daniela Bergschneider, Eirik Falckner, Kristina Austi and Madelen Isa Lindgren.
The title of the exhibition, Garden of Otherworldly Delights, is a subtle reference to the artist Hieronymus Bosch, who painted the triptych, Garden of Earthly Delights between 1490-1500. In his garden, he painted biblical scenes ranging from the creation of the world to apocalyptic images of the world’s end. Bosch’s paintings were rather outrageous for their time because they depict hundreds of naked people cavorting with each other and dancing with or even being eaten by exotic animals and plants. What is also spectacular is the painter’s inclusion of creatures where human-animal-plants morph into unique hybrid beings. Their presence in Bosch’s earthly garden is something we cannot explain, yet they are equally important in the narrative of the world as humans are.
The relationship between human and non-human is embedded within the Nordic way of life through nature and narrative — there is no doubt that trolls are as real as picking and eating blueberries. From this context, imagination thrives and serves as an outlet to contemplate our existence in parallel with other life forms. With this in mind, one can enter Garden of Otherworldly Delights and observe artworks that celebrate the wisdom of other species through textiles, ceramics and glass as well as wood. The artists offer visitors a visual bouquet of artworks with moments to take a closer look and discover what is living, growing, blooming and existing all around us.
Kristina Austi weaves with the jacquard loom and merges together historical or mythological narratives with algorithms to create fantasy-filled compositions often depicting forests and animals. For the exhibition, Austi presents three tapestries that are reminiscent of painted portraits popularized by European nobles and royalty. However, in place of people, Austi has chosen to portray birds as the regal figures in her portraits, positioning them in humanized roles that we identify with because they are personified through clothing symbolizing wealth and prestige. In two of the portraits, The Royal I and The Royal II, the birds hold their heads high and mighty, and gaze directly at the viewer with a look of superiority. In the third portrait, The Bird Tree, a humanized figure with a bird head simultaneously sprouts branches of a tree. In this portrait, three forms of life—animal, human and plant—merge into one complete being. This figure offers us a rope of gold tempting us with an invitation to connect fiction with reality.
The portraits are part of a series inspired by Austi’s research on a collection of tapestries commissioned during the Middle Ages by the Polish-Lithuanian king Sigismund Augustus (15201572). This king was so enamored by expensive handwoven tapestries that he sold the forests of Lithuania to fund his desires for them. In her research on the collection, Austi recognized how the weavers of the tapestries interpreted an unknown world because they wove hybrid creatures into the works, such as strange lions with horns. These mediaeval weavers were most likely interpreting them from stories rather than witnessing exotic animals in real life. In relation to today’s tech-advanced world, Austi notes this is not unlike the way we prompt AI with words to create images from which the results can be unexpected and bizarre.
Through Austi’s bird portraits and research, the age-old narrative of history repeating itself emerges. King Sigismund Augustus’s frivolous need for material things is like today’s overconsumption of resources to acquire wealth, status and privileges. Austi’s royal birds, whose lives are woven in a position of time that is so human, quietly remind us of the value of nature. DNA helices hold the code of all life, everything from animals, humans and plants to fungi and bacteria. These helices are complex languages that scientists have translated to help us understand who we are and how different we are from other life forms. Following this spectrum, Daniela Bergschneider is an artist who interprets life through utilizing a material DNA of porcelain and nylon. Through her hands she constructs unique constellations of sculptures that replicate forms that could be found within terrestrial or aquatic ecosystems.
Bergschneider originally began her practice inspired by the human body, but over time, her creations have brought the non-human into focus. She is also fascinated by the work of biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) who illustrated minute species that could only be seen with a microscope. While his drawings were used as scientific documentation, Bergschneider was attracted to their otherworldly characteristics, which she in turn merges with growth patterns and contrasts she finds in nature to create works that are fragile and strong, beautiful and repulsive, alien and spectacular.
Her sculptures express a vulnerability that is heightened through their materiality that mimics the qualities of skin and bone. Although the sculptures are static, they emanate a sense of motion because the artist positions them in phases of growth and transition. The work titled Inflorescence, mimics a flower stem plucked in full bloom while another work Almost Blooming VII — despite the title — suggests a poetic state of decay, exposing a skeletal carcass of an alien form. Still Unfolding V, with its interlocking fingers of green strands, suggests a rhythm like the ebb and flow of the tide washing over seaweed. If it is through science that nature is confirmed, then it is through the sculptures of Daniela Bergschneider that we can understand how sublime nature is.
Science intermixes with folklore and magic through a series of new ceramic sculptures and masks by Eirik Falckner. With subtle references to science fiction and the extra-terrestrial, the works reveal evidence of an origin connecting to the sea, mountains and forests of Nordic landscapes. Falckner shapes his beings with textures and glazes that mimic the surfaces of stones, shells and earth, imbuing them with the ability to hide and blend in with flora and litha. He often collaborates directly with nature in the creation of his works and installs his sculptures outside allowing for the weather, plants and creatures to leave traces across the ceramic surfaces and elements. Two of the masks in the exhibition were immersed in the sea for several months and over time, the fluctuating tides and temperatures embraced and altered the clay surfaces by contributing their own touch.
The artist adorns some of his sculptures with the accessories of time, such as fossils and quartz which narrate and represent how millions of years can elapse to form a single precious object. Fossils are the remnants of once living creatures that died and were buried and covered by sediment long before the common era. Quartz crystals are formed from magma as it cools deep underground. These earthly accessories accentuate the timeless characteristics of the works; they are beings that could come from the past as well as the future.
Eyes are the most human feature found across all the sculptures while mouths, ears and noses remain invisible. The eyes are hollow and empty, but it does not mean that they are lifeless. In ancient cultures eyes were celebrated as symbols of protection and portals to spiritual worlds. It is interesting to contemplate a place in nature or an alternative universe where Falckner’s sculptures would reveal their wisdom and communicate with us.
Madelen Isa Lindgren has felt connected to the ecosystems of nature since childhood, a time when she imagined building homes within the structure of trees. She has continued to cultivate this awareness for the magic of nature into her practice, translating it into a style and energy that pulsates through her works like a tightly networked system of roots. Lindgren utilizes an almanac of sculptural patterns and shapes that serve as a symbolic language from which she creates new meanings and other worlds. In the exhibition, Lindgren presents us with sculptures from a completely different ecosystem and time. Following the writings of Ursula Le Guinn, the artist explores the cycles of growth and the relationship between nature and body, and how this rhythm of life is disappearing from modern society.
One interesting chapter from the artist’s sculptural almanac is about defense mechanisms found in nature, such as tentacles and shells, and how these correlate to armor or shields that humans use as protection. Her observations translate into a tension between strength and weakness that is often at play in her sculptures and is accentuated through her choice of materials. The sculpture Eve blooms with sharp and soft petals of metal and leather that unfold to expose a large glass bud in the center. The bud appears both impenetrable and vulnerable at the same time. Glass and steel collaborate in a symbiotic relationship akin to how the beauty of a rose is protected by sharp thorns, yet Eve is an object from a world that does not belong to us.
Creating rituals that promote the magic of nature and our belonging within it is at the core of Rootways by Beatrice Alvestad Lopez who works with craft techniques like woodworking. As the title suggests, Rootways refers to the complex root system between plants, however these sculptures nourish each other through a tangle of wires. Her installation is a shrine connecting rituals from the past with the contemporary world and radiates with a magical ambiance. At the center of the shrine stands a pillar of wood that rises like a Tower of Babel with chiseled carvings that cover the entire surface. The markings appear like hieroglyphic language for insects and animals who depend on wood for food and shelter. Around the tower are smaller shrines: ceramic goblets overflowing with dried moss as well as cross-sections of hollow, treasure holding tree trunks that serve as instruments.
The artist is interested in the gestures and movements we perform in relation to exploring and being part of nature, and how they can be translated as a ritual. With Rootways, she encourages natural and human worlds to interact as visitors can touch the instruments to activate sounds and their own senses. With each sound played, an ephemeral, otherworldly score is performed. It is an interaction that creates intimacy with materials and serves as a metaphor for how we have lost touch with nature due to the prevalence of technology. Gestures such as carving wood, digging in the dirt, picking flowers or collecting shells all relate to performing a ritual with nature.
The composition of the installation as a whole carries the diagonal lines of a Baroque painting, and poetically displays the sacred treasures that nature keeps for us — if we are willing to sacrifice our fast-paced, technologically driven world to become part of it. As you explore the Garden of Otherworldly Delights, what secrets will you find? What does this garden have to offer you? Unlike Bosch’s famous garden, there are no naked people dancing, but this otherworldly garden does provide the seeds to contemplate our existence in parallel with other narratives. These ideas have been planted and nurtured by the artists who, through their works, confirm the value of other life forms that exist within, around and beyond the human.
By Anne Klontz, Curator and founder of The Space Craft