From a three-metre-high LED screen, an animated owl towers in front of us. It speaks in fragments and in multiple voices. At times the owl seems sleepy, as if it is about to fall from its branch, only to suddenly wake up, look around, surprised and slightly confused. Colours glide across the screen, and the image flickers, constantly reminding us of its digital and artificial nature. The owl is from Danish-Norwegian artist Ann Lislegaard’s Oracles, Owls… Some Animals Never Sleep (2012/2021). It appears as an oracle, speaking in riddles and broken sentences. The oracle points toward something hidden and speaks in a language we must learn to understand.
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A pioneer in digital art
When ARKEN opens ANIMOID on 24.04.2026, it will be the first major survey of Lislegaard’s work in Denmark. Lislegaard is a pioneer of feminist futurism and the use of digital technology and 3D animation. The exhibition brings together works spanning more than 30 years and across media, from sci-fi-inspired animations to sculpture and immersive sound and light installations.
Among the works is Spinning and Weaving Ada (2016), where an animated spider weaves a web of letters across a series of mirrored boxes that together form the name Ada Lovelace, one of the early female pioneers of computing. The work points to connections between technology, language, and networks, linking the historical with Lislegaard’s own digitally based artistic practice. As a viewer, you are drawn into the reflections of the piece, where any sense of overview constantly slips away. The work celebrates spinning and weaving creating connections, patterns, and networks.


Science fiction as a lens on the present
The exhibition title ANIMOID is taken from science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and its film adaptation Blade Runner. It points to a world where animals, and their roles as symbols of care and empathy, are disappearing, replaced by artificial beings. The term connects the loss of nature with the hope embedded in “anima” and “animation”: to give life and create movement. It becomes an image of loss and change, while also referring to the central role of animation in Lislegaard’s art.
Often drawing on science fiction, Lislegaard explores how technology and language shape the way we see the world. What happens when language breaks down, or when the digital shifts what we perceive? How does technology influence our ideas of the body, gender, and identity? And where is the boundary between the human and the artificially created? The exhibition opens a universe that is both captivating and unsettling. The familiar is displaced, and new connections emerge. It is not a world that offers clear answers, but one that sparks reflection and invites us to experience and rethink our present in new ways.
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Biography
Ann Lislegaard is a pioneer in digital and time-based contemporary art and has, over several decades, played a significant role in the development of 3D animation, sound art, and installation art in Denmark and internationally. She worked with these media at a time when very few, and almost no women, were represented. She was a professor at the School of Media Arts at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 2004 to 2013. Lislegaard graduated from the academy in 1993 and subsequently lived in New York for many years. She has contributed to the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and has received the Danish Arts Foundation’s lifelong honour, the Eckersberg Medal, and in 2024 the Thorvaldsen Medal for her significant contribution to Danish visual art.
Her works often take inspiration from science fiction and revolve around themes such as gender, the body, and the loss of biodiversity, opening new ways of experiencing and understanding our contemporary world. As both an artist and educator, she has a strong influence on younger generations of artists.

You can book a private tour of Ann Lislegaard - Animoid here.
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The exhibition is an international collaboration between
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter
Arken Museum of Contemporary Art
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

The exhibition is supported by
The Augustinus Foundation
Ny Carlsbergfondet
Beckett-Fonden
Knud Højgaards Fond