A Letter from 2025
This is our letter for 2025. Observing the letters from previous years, we can easily find a thread: uncertainty has been following us for a while now, and multiple crises have become the new normal. 2025 has not been a surprise in terms of wars, violence, political and economic problems, and a shared feeling of despair.
But at Index we decided that the best thing we could do in this complicated situation is to continue working hard to produce and offer artistic content, vocabulary, and grammar that allow us to move beyond a polarized description of reality. In fact, we truly believe in art and culture as times and spaces for gathering around ideas and complex feelings. This is why our program has offered a myriad of moments and activities aimed at reaching a wide variety of people: we have increased our tempo (already a high one) to offer temporary platforms for ideas around structures and content, understanding the need to critically connect and analyze both what is said and how it is presented. We understand the importance of reaching people with different ages and backgrounds, we want all of them feeling at home at Index. We talk every now and then about “warm institutionalism”.
Exhibitionally, the year started with CALL IT MUSEUM and a series of questions regarding the voice of the museum, the right to be a museum, and the capacity to imagine a desirable art institution. One of the things we did during this exhibition was something we called secret exhibitions: a series of exhibitions in a hidden space inside Index, conceived as a test of institutional behavior and as a way to share excitement about artistic practices. Four secret exhibitions (with no public information, no Instagram, no external communication) took place for visitors who received an invitation while already at Index. In recent years, we have seen a tendency toward digital consumption that does not turn into action, and with this approach we tested what happens when you don’t follow an established consumption pattern from a distance. It felt very special.
After CALL IT MUSEUM, we organized two solo exhibitions and a group endeavor. With SHOCK VALUE, Madeleine Andersson transformed Index into a research space on brains and stupidity, creating a complex and dense atmosphere of thought that culminated in a symposium. Art and research went hand in hand, helping each other, with neither becoming a mere representation of the other. Then it was time for Claudia Pagès Rabal and ALJUB. The exhibition was the result of a long dialogue with the artist that shaped the multiple temporalities (and advanced video and performativity) at Index. Claudia Pagès Rabal presented a new format, mixing dance, language, rap, humor, bodies, and music to observe historical processes and the desire to inscribe oneself in history. Both exhibition projects enabled international work for Index: with Madeleine Andersson we offered a continuous platform for exhibitional experimentation together with Overgaden in Copenhagen and Kunsthall Trondheim. With Claudia Pagès Rabal, we began working on the co-production of the piece already when it was shown at Manifesta in Barcelona in 2024.
The last exhibition of the year, LIBERATION RADIO, was created together with artist Nhung Nguyen, artist and filmmaker Esther Johnson, and writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet. For us, the exhibition functioned as a system to look at our present through a mirror of the past. This mirror was situated in Sweden during the war in Vietnam and focused on the popular (and cultural) movement to stop the war. In our permanent time travels, we connect this exhibition with the one from 2024 with Massinissa Selmani and its observation of political intentions within urban planning in Algeria. In fact, we are always connecting projects to past and future, this is what Index (and what any index) is: a tool to navigate.
Thanks again,
Marti Manen
Isabella Tjäder
Co-Directors, Index Foundation
Read previous letters here:
A letter from 2024
A letter from 2023
A letter from 2022
A letter from 2021
A letter from 2020
A letter from 2019