Image: Kalmar konstmuseum, Kalmar
Kalmar konstmuseum has opened 'Survival Kit', a summer group exhibition running from 29 April to 30 August 2026 that brings together new installations by Kultivator and Linda Persson with works from the museum’s collection. Framed by the idea of a jordkällare, or earth cellar, the exhibition asks what people would store there in times of uncertainty: potatoes, pumpkins and cauliflower, or memory and knowledge.
According to the museum’s exhibition text, 'Survival Kit' looks at artistic strategies for meeting contemporary and future challenges. It positions the earth cellar as a model for preservation and preparation, and as a way to think about art as a resource for ideas, practices and resistance. The exhibition is part of Smålandstriennalen: Oro – konst, beredskap och motstånd and is produced in collaboration with Linnéuniversitetet within the interdisciplinary research project 'Hopemaking: Att nära det positiva motståndets kulturer'.
The group show combines works from the museum’s collection with two new site-specific installations. Öland-based artist collective Kultivator, led by Mathieu Vrijman and Malin Lindmark Vrijman, has made a new installation based on the storage and preservation qualities of the earth cellar. The museum describes the work as a kind of workplace where visitors are invited to think about hope and concern. Kultivator also reactivates parts of its earlier work 'Elder’s Hill' from 2013, originally built in Dyestad, Öland, and shown as a model at Kalmar konstmuseum that same year.
Linda Persson, a Småland-based artist who works with sculptural processes, material experiments and alchemical methods, contributes another installation. The museum says her work uses water, animation and clay to consider circular processes and transience. During the exhibition period, visitors will also be able to follow the slow erosion of a Swedish-made cannonball back into iron dust.
The selection from the collection extends the exhibition’s focus on shelter, retention and endurance. It includes paintings by Christine Sundberg (1837–1892), Anders Lindgren (1933–2018) and Sven Ljungberg (1913–2010), as well as 'Checkpoint', a series of graphic works by the Russian artist Pavel Otdelnov from 2022. Kalmar konstmuseum says Otdelnov made the series in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war crimes committed against people and nature.
The summer programme around the exhibition includes drop-in activities in the museum’s outdoor studio, Konstparken, running Thursdays to Saturdays until 8 August from 13:00 to 16:00. Inspired by Gunilla Klingberg’s 'Grief Trails Bright Phantoms in Its Wake', the sessions explore artistic expression, repetition, composition, pattern and print techniques.
Other scheduled public events include a talk on 20 July with biologist and butterfly collector Mats Lindeborg about the extinct caterpillar blue butterfly and threatened biodiversity, and a conversation on 8 August between Liv Strömquist and writer Saga Cavallin, linked to Strömquist’s exhibition 'Where Is My Mind?'. Kalmar konstmuseum also says it has extended summer opening hours, with the museum open daily from 11:00 to 17:00 from 22 June.
