Sleep

Have you slept well? Across art, literature, cultural history, and science, Louisiana opens a major thematic exhibition on one of life's most fascinating and enigmatic phenomena. A journey into the universe of sleep, from lullabies to insomnia, dreams and nightmares, sleeping pills and brainwaves, biology and psychology, and...

Sleeping – and at times not being able to sleep – fills, in principle, one-third of our lives and is a vital need that all people share. At the same time, sleep is the state in which we as individuals are most private, vulnerable, and left to ourselves.

Sleep is a biological necessity and is today a strong and broad field of research. For centuries, sleep has also been a source of inspiration and scrutiny in art and cultural history, where visual art, literature, film, and music have helped shape our images of sleeping.

At the same time, sleep – and especially the idea of good sleep – is connected to and shaped by our history and the society we live in.

Today, digitalization has once again shifted the boundary between day and night. Work, entertainment, and the outside world follow us into bed, while sleep has become a coveted health ideal that we try to optimize and control, among other things, through sleep apps.

When we sleep, reality is turned upside down, and behind closed eyes, images emerge that can contain memories, desires, and strange fantasies. For centuries, dreams were perceived as a message from the gods, a warning about the future, or a journey to another world. Later, dreams were understood as a window to the unconscious and a tool for understanding our repressed needs.

Today, researchers can record brainwaves, eye movements, breathing, and muscle activity while we sleep. But even though the biological processes of sleep can be increasingly measured, there is still much we do not know.

Happens when we sleep? Why do we dream? Why do we remember some dreams and forget others? And why can something so natural be so easy for some and difficult for others?

As in The Sea, The Irreplaceable Human, The Moon, and Mother!, classical works and contemporary art are mixed with film, literature, design, science, and objects from cultural history. The exhibition fills the entire South Wing of the museum.