Maja Malou Lyse (b. 1993, Denmark) is a multidisciplinary artist whose bold and provocative work dissects the entanglements of desire, power, and mass media. At the core of her practice lies a critical examination of the body’s relationship to the image—a dynamic rendered increasingly complex in the digital age. Lyse interrogates how images, both ubiquitous and unrelenting, shape sexuality, self-perception, and the commodification of identity, while tracing how media, the pornographic image, and cultural history construct and preserve these ideas over time.
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Her work situates itself within the very platforms that dominate our visual environment—television, magazines, tabloids, billboards, and social media. By appropriating and reconfiguring these familiar spaces, she performs incisive interventions that unravel the symbiotic relationship between art and media reality. In doing so, she exposes the spectacle that defines contemporary culture: one that seduces as much as it subjugates, embedding itself deep within our collective consciousness.
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Led with humor, ambiguity, and the vernacular of pop culture, Lyse’s work compels a deeper reckoning with the deluge of visual stimuli saturating modern life. She is recognised for her sharp, critical engagement with the erotic image and the spectacle of mass media—probing how these forces shape desire, identity, and cultural memory. With a fearless commitment to complex and urgent topics, her practice confronts the power of images with equal measures of criticality and wit.
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Lyse lives and works between New York City and Copenhagen. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2022). She has had solo exhibitions at Overgaden (Copenhagen) and Brandts Kunstmuseum (Odense), and participated in group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Denmark (Copenhagen), the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Copenhagen Contemporary (Copenhagen), Blueproject Foundation (Barcelona), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), ARoS (Aarhus), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), and Museum of Contemporary Art (Roskilde), among others. From 2018–2019, she hosted Sex med Maja on DR—the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.
In 2026, Lyse will represent Denmark at the Danish Pavilion for the 61st Venice Biennale.
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