Cooper & Gorfer. Utopia

From 9 May, Zielona Brama, a branch of the National Museum in Gdańsk, presents an exhibition by the duo Cooper & Gorfer, known for their groundbreaking approach to portraiture that combines photography with painting, textile, collage and video. “Utopia” gives a voice to women with experience of migration.

The artistic duo Cooper & Gorfer, working in Sweden, consists of American Sarah Cooper and Austrian Nina Gorfer. Their work is a multi-layered story about identity, memory and human experience. Cooper & Gorfer's works have been shown at institutions such as Fotografiska (Stockholm, New York), the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg and the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).

The starting point of “Utopia” is the stories of eleven young women. The heroines come from Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq (Kurdistan) and Iran. Some of them arrived in Sweden during the migration wave of 2015–2016, while others were born there into migrant families.

– The works grow out of meetings with young women whose lives are shaped by migration, displacement and complex personal histories. Rather than illustrating their fates directly, we work in a multi-layered process: we combine photography, textile and painterly elements to convey the complexity of human experience. As in many of our projects, each work becomes a space where an individual experience meets a broader narrative. It is the overlap of what is personal with what is collective. Although the portraits are deeply intimate for the heroines, they open a space for the viewer to understand and identify with them – says Sarah Cooper.

For Cooper & Gorfer, the personal memories and stories of the exhibition's heroines become an important part of the work, although the photographs and video productions created do not have a documentary character. The young women are presented in monumental compositions reminiscent of historical and mythological iconography. They are accompanied by objects of personal significance, such as a ring, a necklace, a book or a grandmother's shawl.

– The key theme of the exhibition is reflection on the invisible structures that shape our perception of the world and of ourselves. Family history, culture and the socio-political context take the form of restless, multi-layered architectures of an ambivalent character in these works. On the one hand they offer shelter and a sense of security; on the other, they may limit and narrow the way we see reality – comments exhibition curator Gabriela Brdej.

The utopia of the title is rethought here and no longer means the vision of an ideal society. Derived from the Greek ou-topos, meaning “no-place”, it refers not to a land that does not exist, but to a way of thinking in which reality is not given once and for all. Utopia is an inner space and a realm of imagination, where entrenched patterns can be challenged. It is not a distant goal but a daily practice of looking that allows us to go beyond what we take for granted.

– For me, utopia is not an ideal place but a necessary act of imagination. The works reflect a tension I keep returning to: between reality and inner vision, where utopia is not an escape but a quiet persistence along a different trajectory, a reminder that we are not only able to imagine the world but also to shape it – explains Nina Gorfer.

The exhibition at the Zielona Brama branch of the National Museum in Gdańsk, at Długi Targ 24, runs from 9 May to 31 October 2026. The opening takes place on 9 May at 18:00, and on Sunday 10 May at Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer will guide visitors through their exhibition. The guided tour will be conducted in English. The Zielona Brama branch is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00–17:00. Tickets cost 25 zł for the standard fee, 20 zł for the reduced fee and 1 zł for pupils and students aged 7–26, and can be purchased at the on-site box office.