Elias Björn, Sweden

Born in Lund in 1979, lives and work in Gothenburg,

Elias Björn is a Swedish visual artist who works across performance, installation, sculpture, photography, video, and text, exploring masculinity and male identity, examining how individuals are shaped through stories, social structures, cultural narratives, and encounters.

Themes of violence, popular culture, hierarchy, loneliness, intimacy, heroism, and failure permeate his work, which questions the norms and expectations surrounding contemporary masculinity. Rather than presenting fixed identities, Björn creates situations in which vulnerability, ambiguity, and human relationships become central, revealing the tensions between individual experience and collective ideals.

A distinctive aspect of Björn’s practice is his use of delegated performers. Rather than placing his own body at the centre of the work, he frequently collaborates with other performers, allowing the performances to move beyond autobiography toward a broader exploration of masculinity as a shared social and cultural construction. This strategy shifts the focus from the artist as individual to the relationships, behaviours, and structures enacted within the performance itself.

Björn also engages in an ongoing dialogue with performance and art history, reinterpreting seminal works by artists such as Yves Klein, Yoko Ono, and Valie Export through the lens of contemporary masculinity. His performances transform these historical references into new investigations of power, intimacy, vulnerability, and belonging.

Björn received his MFA from the University of Bergen in 2017. His work has been presented internationally at venues including Oppland Kunstsenter (Lillehammer), Candyland (Stockholm), Konstepidemin (Gothenburg), the Borås International Sculpture Biennial, Galleri Sinne (Helsinki), USF Verftet (Bergen), and Fotogalleriet (Oslo).