Image: KØS - Museum for kunst i det offentlige rum, New York
MAPS – Museum of Art in Public Space is presenting 'The House that Pigs built' by Cooking Sections, an exhibition that draws a line between food habits, the climate crisis and industrial land use through the materials of everyday life. According to the museum, the project is the result of more than three years of collaboration between the artist duo and MAPS, and it remains on view until 2 August 2026 in Køge, Denmark.
The exhibition is built around a full-scale 3D-rendered apartment that visitors enter as a form of environmental and material investigation. Inside, ordinary objects and domestic surfaces are presented as if they could disclose their own origins, with the exhibition’s premise centered on the presence of pig byproducts in the materials surrounding us. MAPS describes the installation as a way of making visible what is usually hidden in furniture, finishes and household products.
The museum’s text says that in Denmark the number of pigs exceeds the human population by more than five to one, and frames that imbalance as one that leaves traces in homes, landscapes and shared futures. Cooking Sections’ research for the project looks at how eating habits are tied to the climate crisis, while also examining the connections between industrial agriculture, materials and everyday life. The museum presents the work as an extension of public-space thinking that reaches beyond architecture and into the ground itself, which it describes as the common base that nourishes societies and cultures.
A longer statement on the exhibition page says the project was developed with historian Hannah Landecker and unfolds as a sensory sound work, with voices describing how pigs are transformed into materials and how buildings in turn shape animal bodies. That framing places the exhibition between research, installation and listening experience, giving the domestic setting a wider ecological and industrial context without leaving the realm of verified source material.
MAPS has positioned the exhibition within a broader programme focused on art in public space and contemporary forms of research-based practice. The museum, formerly known as KØS – Museum for kunst i det offentlige rum, says it rebranded in January 2025 as MAPS – Museum of Art in Public Space, while continuing to work with artists, researchers and local actors on projects that examine how public art can be shown, developed and experienced.
The exhibition page states that 'The House that Pigs built' is curated by MAPS’ senior curator Irene Campolmi. It also notes support from the Obel Family Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation, with additional support from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s Future Flourishing Programme and the British Academy. MAPS lists the exhibition dates as 19 March to 2 August 2026 at MAPS Museum, Nørregade 29, 4600 Køge.
