About Jakob Kudsk Steensen

Jakob Kudsk Steensen (b. 1987, Denmark) is an artist working with environmental storytelling through virtual world building, video games, spatial sound and large-scale installations. The artist creates interpretations of overlooked natural phenomena, from newly discovered volcanic deep sea landscapes, temporary desert lakes and forgotten swamps, to songs of extinct birds found in natural history archives. He points towards unaddressed, unrevealed or unspoken narratives surrounding climate change—how it alters our bodies and our minds, plays with our memories and restructures our collective unconscious. 

Artworks are created through extensive periods of fieldwork, often developed in collaboration with field biologists, composers, and philosophers. Key collaborators include environmental philosopher Melanie Challenger, musician ARCA, performer and vocalist Lyra Pramuk, experimental cellist Okkyung Lee, Michael Riesman, Composer and Musical Director for the Philip Glass Ensemble, Ornithologist and author Dr. Douglas H. Pratt, South Korean pop band BTS, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde, among others.

Steensen’s most recent commissions include The Song Trapper at Fondation Louis Vuitton 2025-26, Boreal Dreams at Fondation Beyeler 2025, and Psychosphere at Cisternerne 2025. Prior to this, Steensen exhibited The Ephemeral Lake at Tokyo’s Mori Museum in February 2025, following the artworks premiere at Hamburg’s Hamburger Kunsthalle in April 2024. Other notable solo exhibitions include Berl-Berl, commissioned by LAS for Halle am Berghain in Berlin 2021, and Catharsis at London’s Serpentine Galleries in 2020. His work Liminal Lands was commissioned by the Luma Foundation for the Prelude exhibition in 2021, and Catharsis shown at Serpentine Galleries 2020 as part of Connect BTS. He also received the Serpentine Augmented Architecture commission in 2019 to create The Deep Listener with Google Arts and Culture. 

 He is the recipient of the best VR graphics at the 2019 Cinequest Festival for Technology and Cinema, the Prix du Jury (2019) at Les Rencontres Arles, the Webby Award - People’s Choice VR (2018), and the Games for Change Award - Most Innovative 2018, among others.

Kudsk Steensen’s artworks are in the collections of the Luma Foundation, KADIST, LAS, Arken Museum of Art, ARoS Museum of Art, SMK - National Museum of Art Denmark, amongst others.