Agnes Scherer
Moderna Museet, Sweden
14 May - 30 August 2026
Moderna Museet in Stockholm, founded in 1958, is one of Europe’s leading museums for modern and contemporary art. Its collection comprises more than 130,000 works across painting, sculpture and photography, including major Swedish and Nordic artists, French modernism, and American art from the 1950s and ’60s. The museum also holds about 100,000 photographs dating from 1840 onwards. Exhibitions rotate between collection highlights and temporary projects, including shows at their satellite institution in southern Sweden, Moderna Museet Malmö, which opened in 2009.
The group exhibition House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting offers a deep dive into contemporary painting. The exhibition borrows its name from the Mesopotamian goddess Nisaba, initially the protector of grain and accounting, but, with the invention of writing, she also became the goddess of the scribe, of storytelling finding material form. For this major international group exhibition, Scherer has been commissioned to create a new large-scale installation that encircles the central platform. Conceived as a reflection on storytelling, the work links painting and architecture through allegory and cultural histories, such as puppetry. Other exhibiting artists include Michael Armitage, Kevin Beasley, Nicole Eisenman, Wangechi Mutu and Salman Toor, among others.
Agnes Scherer (born 1985 in Lohr am Main, Germany) lives and works in Salzburg, where she teaches at the University Mozarteum. Her detailed, hand-painted works often unfold across large theatrical installations that combine painting, sculpture and handmade props. Drawing on art history, mythology and cultural narratives, Scherer creates scenographic environments where characters and symbols interact like actors on a stage. Her practice merges visual storytelling with performance, exploring the relationship between image, ritual and collective imagination.
This is her first collaboration with Phileas.
This collaboration was aided by a research trip to Vienna by the curator Hendrik Folkerts, organised by Phileas in January 2025.
