iBonniers Konsthall · Vasastan
The Defeated: The Aesthetics of Resistance 2026
Group show after Peter Weiss's novels asking what resisting fascism means today, with new commissions beside works by Weiss, Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, Godard and Farocki.
You start at a wall of book covers: every title Peter Weiss published, many of them designed by him. That sets the tone for a show built mostly from documents. There is exactly one Weiss painting, Das grosse Welttheater from 1937, and Kunstkritikk's Dan Jönsson could not understand why there weren't more.
The route passes early films and collages, then reaches its real centre: the 1960s plays Weiss made with his wife, the set designer Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, among them Marat/Sade and The Investigation, ending with the 1966-67 Russell Tribunal on Vietnam. New work by around a dozen contemporary artists is threaded through the archive.
Jönsson found the theatre history "endlessly fascinating", if somewhat dry, and the new commissions much weaker, a few "tacked on". Come for Weiss's theatre and expect a lot of reading. Admission is 130 SEK, free on Fridays and for under-26s, with daily Swedish-language tours included. Wednesdays it stays open until 8pm.
Editor's pick
A group show built on Peter Weiss's novels, asking what resisting fascism means today. New commissions hang beside works by Weiss, Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, Godard and Farocki.
Look for
Das grosse Welttheater (1937)
Weiss's only painting in the show, an apocalyptic fantasy on a 120 x 160 cm wood panel in darkly luminous colours, made two years before the war.
Skråpuken
Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss's rusty-steel stage relief for the 1967 play Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, with prison bars, chains, a bishop's mitre and a flag, standing mid-room so you can walk round the back.
Kane and Osouf's textile chapel
In the middle of a gallery, a fabric chapel hung with hundreds of portraits of martyrs, from Louise Michel to Pussy Riot.
Lina Selander, Binding the Dream
A three-screen film that cuts material from the Weiss archive with news footage from Palestine and the interiors of Carl Eldh's Studio Museum in Stockholm.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want paintings: there is one Weiss canvas among mostly documents and archive material.
With kids
Free for everyone under 26. Hörnan, the kids' corner one floor below the galleries, has drop-in making activities in the spirit of the current exhibition.
Also at Bonniers Konsthall
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
6
- The Defeated: The Aesthetics of Resistance 2026Photo: Bonniers Konsthall (Jean-Baptiste Béranger)
- Democracy does not exist - We make it!Courtesy of Medelhavsmuseet (Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities)
- MUCHA – Beyond Art NouveauCourtesy of Artipelag
- Reflections through timePhoto: Karin Björkquist
- Bonniers KonsthallAleWi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Medelhavsmuseet (Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities)Holger Ellgaard / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0