“THE SPEAKER’S ROOM”
Solo Exhibition, Den Frie udstillingsbygning
Opening: 22.01.26 : 17.00 — 19.00
23.01.26 — 03.05.26
Curated by
Laura Gerdes-Miranda
Sif Lindblad
Production Management by
Joakim Wei Bernild
The exhibition space OSLO
OSLO is Den Frie’s lower-floor exhibition space dedicated to solo projects. At OSLO, we produce and present new works by artists of different nationalities, generations, and media, made specifically for Den Frie and with a focus on social and political urgency, aiming at making sense of the world today. Den Frie was founded by artists with an experimental vision and collective spirit. OSLO continues this legacy by supporting innovative artistic practices in the present.The name OSLO is a reference to Den Frie’s location at Oslo Plads and an anagram for solo.
ALL RISE 10.01.2025
Portraits by @mishaelfapohunda
Styling by @soggyholy
Jewellery design by @ninnayork
Opening info - link in bio. 🖤
Happy New Year everyone
Final week to step inside ‘The Speaker’s Room’ by Eliyah Mesayer.
In The Speaker’s Room, Eliyah Mesayer brings her imaginary state Illiyeen to Den Frie in a shadow version of a state office, displacing the architecture of power from the political to the poetic. Here, familiar symbols of authority dissolve through subtle shifts, leaving behind an abandoned room in which another form of national narrative emerges: one not held together by shared identity, national boundaries, or authoritative symbols, but by collective and dreamlike imaginaries of community.
‘The Speaker’s Room’ runs till 03.05.26 and is the sixth exhibition in our OSLO-program presenting commissioned solo projects made specifically for the sub-level gallery at Den Frie.
Free entrance through pur café @pegasus.cph
Production & artistic development by Joakim Wei Bernild (@juju.bluut )
Photos by Malle Madsen
Last week with Eliyah Mesayer’s The Speaker’s Room at Den Frie.
Through subtle displacements and small gestures, the exhibition unsettles the established iconography of the state office to instead create a space poised between copy and poetry, past and present. The office is stripped of any political function, while its architecture is reduced to texture, shadow and absence. What remains is an archive of office supplies from an indeterminate time; emblems of power pared back to their raw essence, left behind as traces and surfaces.
Last day Sunday <3
Toaster Performance Biennale presents:
Whispered Legislation by Eliyah Mesayer (DK)
Location: Den Frie, Sal 4 + Sal 2
Time: 23/4 at 19.30-20.15 & 26/4 at 16.00-17.00
Eliyah Mesayer’s artistic practice balances on the threshold between reality and fiction. Across installation, performance, and poetry—and using conceptual and scenographic approches—she materializes and intertwines historical facts with poetic fiction in dreamy and utopian manifestations.
Her ongoing project Illiyeen is based on a Bedouin expression that refers to a celestial register where the deeds of the righteous are recorded and preserved. In Mesayer’s practice, Illiyeen is transformed into an allegorical “state of nowhere and nation of everywhere”—a place beyond geographic and national boundaries. From this point, she unfolds a fictional and poetic world-building that examines how power is formed, distributed, and represented.
For TOASTER, Mesayer presents two performances in which guardians of Illiyeen inscribe the state’s past and future statutes. In the first performance, two characters carry out the writing, while in the second, the entire audience becomes part of the process—experiencing the creation of a state where poetry holds the highest authority and participating in the act of recording its poetics.
Eliyah Mesayer (DK) graduated from the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts, Aarhus, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, and Bergen Academy of Art and Design. She has previously exhibited at Heartland Festival, Rå Hal in Aarhus, MMCA in Seoul, and the Gwangju Biennale. Her solo exhibition The Speaker’s Room will open at Den Frie in Oslo in January 2026. Mesayer lives and works in Copenhagen.
🟩 Secure your Biennale Pass to experience ‘Whispered Legislation’ — link in bio 🟩
We hope to see you for Toaster Performance Biennale 2026!
Video by: @juju.bluut
On view in our sub-level gallery OSLO: ‘The Speaker’s Room’ by Eliyah Mesayer.
In The Speaker’s Room, Eliyah Mesayer brings her imaginary state Illiyeen to Den Frie in a shadow version of a state office, displacing the architecture of power from the political to the poetic. Here, familiar symbols of authority dissolve through subtle shifts, leaving behind an abandoned room in which another form of national narrative emerges: one not held together by shared identity, national boundaries, or authoritative symbols, but by collective and dreamlike imaginaries of community.
‘The Speaker’s Room’ runs till 03.05.26 and is the sixth exhibition in our OSLO-program presenting commissioned solo projects made specifically for the sub-level gallery at Den Frie.
Free entrance through pur café @pegasus.cph
Production & artistic development by Joakim Wei Bernild (@juju.bluut )
Photos by Malle Madsen
Eliyah Mesayer’s exhibition ‘The Speaker’s Room’ is on view in our sub-level gallery OSLO!
Mesayer’s ongoing project Illiyeen originates from a Bedouin expression referring to a celestial register in which the deeds of the righteous are recorded and preserved; in Mesayer’s practice, this is transformed into an allegorical state beyond geographic and national boundaries. From this point, she unfolds a fictional and poetic world-building in which imagination functions as a method for examining how power is formed, distributed, and represented.
In ‘The Speaker’s Room’, Illiyeen is conjured as a state office stripped of real-political function, with architecture reduced to texture, shadows, and absence. Familiar symbols of authority dissolve through subtle shifts, leaving behind an abandoned room in which another form of national narrative emerges: one not held together by shared identity, national boundaries, or authoritative symbols, but by collective and dreamlike imaginaries of community.
‘The Speaker’s Room’ runs till 03.05.26
Production & artistic development by Joakim Wei Bernild (@juju.bluut )
Photos by @mallegilbert
