Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset

Artists

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1961, and Trodheim, Norway, 1965, respectively. Live and work in Berlin.

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have worked together as an artist duo since the mid 1990s. Major exhibitions include: The Nordic and Danish Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009; and the same year a survey show at MUSAC-Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León. The artist duo has also held solo shows at The Serpentine Gallery, London; Tate Modern, London; The Power Plant, Toronto; Malmö Konsthall; and Kunsthalle Zürich. They have participated in numerous biennials including several editions of the Venice Biennial, Manifesta 3 and the Istanbul, São Paulo, Berlin, Gwangju and Yokohama biennials.

Prada Marfa —a full scale replica of a Prada shop in the middle of the Texan dessert—, and Short Cut —a car and a caravan breaking up from the ground which was first shown in Milano and now in the collection of MCA-Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago—, are among their most well known works. In 2003, Elmgreen & Dragset won the prestigious Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and were shortlisted for The Guggenheim Hugo Boss Prize. In 2003, they won the German Government’s competition for a memorial in Tiergarten park in Berlin, in memory of the gay victims of the Nazi regime, which was unveiled in May 2008.