Filip Vest

Filip Vest (they/them, DK, b. 1995) holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy. Through performances, installations and film, they explore subjects as identity, performativity and work. Vest's works negotiate the social scripts and structures we take for granted, to see if there are other possible stories to tell, other ways of being in the world. 

Filip Vest has previously shown their work at SMK The National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen Contemporary, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Arken Museum for Contemporary Art, Den Frie, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Roskilde Festival, Tallinn Art Hall, MMCA Seoul, Museum of Modern Art Zagreb and at Manifesta13 as well as The 15th Gwanju Biennale. Vest’s work is in the collection of Moderna Museet.

Selected projects:
Ruinerne / The Ruins (2026)
Self Tape (2024-2025)
Prøvedage / The Tryouts (2024)
Resort (2023)
The Wide-Mouthed Frog (2022)
Bunk (2022, 2024)
Filmkys / Movie Kiss (2022)
Bed Made To Look Like Body (2021)
Foot Fault (2021)

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Ruinerne / The Ruins (in process, 2026)

Ruinerne ("The Ruins") is a musical inspired performance by Filip Vest and Kai Merke using live action roleplay and song to evoke new worlds in the ruins of the existing one. In the story we meet a group of creatures living in their own alternative society, where they're trying to repair the violence written into their bodies, develop a new language and renegotiate utopias of the past.

Ruinerne is currently under development . Photos and video are from a worksharing at Deep Forest Art Land during the early development of the work in 2025

DEEP FOREST ART LAND, SIXTYEIGHT ART INSTITUTE, FERAL FESTIVAL, PASSAGE FESTIVAL, METROPOLIS, SYDHAVN TEATER

CONCEPT / DIRECTING: Filip Vest, KAI MERKE
CHOREOGRAPHY: KAI MERKE
scenography: Filip Vest
Music: FRANCESCA BURATELLI and RASMUS STEENBERG
TEXT: FILIP VEST in collaboration with the team
PERFORMERS: THE PERFORMANCE is developed in collaboration with and performed by: Jasmine Gordon, Anaïs Matwara, Peter Scherrebeck / Misty Superdeluxe and Faun Vium
Supported by: Statens Kunstfond, DET OBELSKE FAMILIEFOND, WILHELM HANSEN FONDEN, NORDEA FONDEN
PHOTOS: DAVY DENCKE, PERNILLE EMILIA KJÆR
VIDEO: VALENTIN MARCUS ANDERSEN
Thank you to: Husets Teater, Anna Caroline Kristensen, Miu Beydin, Snorre Elvin, Abdul Kader Moses and alex blum.

Self Tape (2024-2025)

Self Tape is an exploration of precarious work, identity, exhaustion, and humiliation in late capitalism. We follow an androgenous creature with light blue skin, long ears and red boots, that is being held captive in an eternal casting limbo by an unknown entity that only takes the shape of a menacing buzzer sound and a red light. 

The creature that is part monster, part pop princess is struggling to find a role that it can play, as it code switches between famous monsters and divas throughout the time: Gollum, Frankenstein's monster, Marilyn Monroe and Dolly Parton among others. When the creature is not performing monologues, dancing or playing music with its long nails, it tries to answer questions about its prior work experience, but ends up talking about its ex and childhood instead. "What are you looking for?" the creature asks in a mix between frustration, flirtation, and fear…

Review - Kunstkritikk
Ringsted Galleriet, MMCA Seoul, The fifteenth Gwanju Biennale, Moderna Museet Malmö, EKKM - CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM OF ESTONIA, COPENHAGEN

Concept / directing / scenography: Filip Vest
PERFORMED BY: Filip Vest
FILM/EDITING: VILLE VIDØ
Music: FRANCESCA BURATELLI
Choreography: PAOLO DE VENECIA GILE
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: RASMUS BALLING
MAKE-UP: LINE SARA HEIBERG, NOR BÜLOW
Supported by: Statens Kunstfond, Ny Carlsberg Fondet, DEN HIELMSTIERNE-ROSENCRONSKE STIFTELSE
Thank you to: METTE RIISE, DANIEL MØLHOLT BÜLOW, BILLIE MEINICHE, CHRISTY DOKBUA, LISBETH HOLTEN, MORTEN VEST, PERNILLE EMILIA KJÆR, ASTA HERTA MØLLHOLST

Prøvedage / The Tryouts (2024)

“What if the fire isn’t the end, but the beginning?”

Prøvedage (”The Tryouts”) is a play by Filip Vest about crises, hope, identity, and work. It’s about all the stories we tell about ourselves, each other, and the world we live in – and about other stories that might be possible.

We follow three interns who have been tasked with cleaning up a theatre after a fire. While working, they are accidentally locked inside, and to pass the time, they begin sharing stories from their lives and imagine new tales from the charred remains of the set pieces they find. Meanwhile, they navigate their own tangled identities, both minor and major crises, and the role of art in society.

Reviews:IsceneMagasinetKBH
Concept / directing / scenography: Filip Vest 
Script: Filip Vest, Sidsel Ana Welden, Jihaan Yussuf
Actors: Ludvig Brostrup, Marie-Lydie Nokouda, Rebecca Langley Jensen
Music: Joakim Wei Bernild
Light design: Rosa Birkedal
Choreography: Kai Merke
Script consultants: Marie Bjørn, Joan Rang Christensen
Directing consultant: Astrid Lindhardt Iversen
Producer: Maja Bonde Holtze (prfrm)
Co-produced by: TOASTER and The Round Tower
Supported by: Statens Kunstfond, Ny Carlsberg Fondet, Augustinus Fonden, Knud Højgaards Fond, Wilhelm Hansen Fonden, København Kommunes Scenekunstudvalg, Statens Værksteder for Kunst
Thank you to: Værk APS, Anne Sofie Skjold Møller, Miu Beydin, Frederik Albrecht, Pernille Emilia Kjær, Anna Caroline Kristensen
Photos: Johan May Nitschke
Trailer: Søren Meisner

Resort (2023)

Resort is an exhibition and performance by Filip Vest. The exhibition takes the form of a surreal holiday paradise where disaster lurks just beneath the luxurious surface. The performance revolves around a couple who have gone on holiday to a resort to fix their relationship. They begin a role play, pretending to be two strangers meeting in a hotel bar. But as they try out different scenari- os, they slowly lose control of the game and their sense of self. At the resort everything appears porous. Nature and culture, identities, and relations, past, present, and future coalesce. Resort enters a conversation with the current climate and biodiversity crisis through the lens of a crumbling rela- tionship. Movements small and large affect each other: plate tectonics and relationship dynamics, a breakup and/or the end of the world.

Resort was first shown at Møstings in 2023 and then selected for the curated programme at CPH Stage where it repremiered in 2024.

Reviews: 
Bastard
Iscene
Den 4. Væg
co-produced by: TOASTER, CPH Stage, AVENY-T
Supported by: Statens Kunstfond, frederiksbergfonden, Arbejdernes Landsbank, Beckett Fonden, Colour Ceramica and Rosendahl Design
Photos: Torben Eskerod, Palle Bo Nielsen, Erik andré nes

The Wide-Mouthed Frog (2022)

In the performance “The Wide-Mouthed Frog” we meet a frog trying to perform a striptease routine for the director of an art hall, but midways it has a breakdown and starts ranting about the struggles of being a frog and and artist in a post-capitalist society. It’s a story about performance art and experience economy, loneliness and capitalism, fetischisation, frogs and sex.

The performance was developed for the opening of CPH Art Week, 2022 and has since been shown in various site-specific iterations.

“…And as you know in the art world often they can’t offer you money, but they can offer you a lot of exposure! Too bad the only thing I got exposed to was gonorrhea…

Sorry am I using that word correctly? Exposure? I think the word I was looking for was… Exploitation? Sorry I always mix up the two of them...”

previously SHOWN AT: nikolaj kunsthal,  arken  museum for contemporary art,  kunsten museum of modern art, copenhagen pride, udstillingsstedet sydhavn station, the danish art foundation, folkemødet bonrholm and more

Bunk (2022, 2024)

Bunk is a work about longing, intimacy and the passage of time: being young and wanting to be older, getting older and wishing to be younger. 

We follow three characters during a series of sleepless nights. They can't see or hear each other and spend each night talking to themselves and building new realities and escapes: a rope made from a blanket or a blue duvet cover turned into a swimming pool. 

Fantasies, desires, dreams, anxieties and memories mix somewhere between sleep and consciousness. It’s a story about imagined childhoods, queer temporalities, sleepless nights and multiple puberties. 

Bunk was originally developed in 2022 in collaboration with the three dancers and choreographers: Kai Merke, Andreas Haglund and Denise Lim during a residency at Hollufgård Gæsteatelier. A new iteration of Bunk was made in 2024 for the project In Situ Philippines at Manila Metropolitan Theater in collaboration with choreographer Kai Merke and the three local performers: Sasa Cabalquinto, Jeremy Mayores and Kyle Confesor.

Concept / directing / scenography: Filip Vest
CHOREOGRAPHY: Filip Vest, KAI MERKE
TEXT AND MOVEMENT DEVELOPED IN COLLABORATION WITH: KaI Merke, andreas haglund, denise lim, sasa cabalquinto, jeremy mayores, kyle confessor
Music: Joakim Wei Bernild
curated by: Vanini Belarmino
Co-produced by: belarmino and partners, cultural center of the philippines
Supported by: Statens Kunstfond, Ny Carlsberg Fondet, hollufgård
Thank you to: EYA BELDIA, RENZ SEVILLA
Photos: GERIC CRUZ, FILIP VEST

Filmkys / Movie Kiss (2022)

“Filmkys” (”Movie Kiss”) is a performance and exhibition about cinema, desire, intimacy and our oversaturated and deficient language for love. It’s a story about clichés, fake kisses on the screen and hesitant kisses in the dark, about which roles we cast and miscast each other as in the film, we call our life.

At the opening a performance took place, where people reenacted famous movie kisses. During the exhibition period a film was screened in the cinema about all the things that happen in the dark, while the movie is running. A hand brushes another hand, a distracting smell, a piece of candy is eaten, another piece is lost, the moment your realize it’s the wrong movie, moving out from the dark into the light streets, losing the sense of time, an awkward goodbye, “I’m going that way”, “Me too”, “Okay”…

The exhibition was originally developed for the opening exhibition of the new exhibition space Foyer Contemporary that inhabits the foyer of the cinema, Park Bio. The project was later remade for Celsius Projects in Malmö.

Exhibition companion: 
Håkon Lillegraven - The Code

Bed Made to Look Like Body (2021)

Bed Made to Look Like Body is a performance in the form of a monologue. We follow a person sitting in a hotel room waiting for a date. The waiting person has turned off their phone so that the other person cannot call and cancel. As time goes by, we experience the waiting person’s anxious thoughts, inner monologues and attempt to kill time while the light changes and day turns into night.

When there is no performance, the visitor can experience the work as a sound installation. In this version of the monologue, the ”I” of the work changes into a “you” so that the listener now becomes the waiting person, listening to the sound of their own thoughts told by the objects in the hotel room.

The title of the work is borrowed from Maggie Nelson’s poem Wheels from her collection of poems Shiner.

SHOWN AT: NIKOLAJ KUNSTHAL, KLUBB ERGI, MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ZAGREB
Supported by: Statens Kunstfond
Thank you to: BILLESKOV TÆPPER

Foot Fault (2021)

In 1917, the Danish tennis player Leif Rovsing (1887-1977) was banned from all tournaments because rumours about his homosexuality had begun to circulate. During the following years, he tried to contest the decision again and again, but with no luck. Eventually he ended up building his own tennis court that opened its doors in 1921.

“Foot Fault” is a reimagining of Rovsing’s tennis court. It’s an exhibition about rules, sex, queer bodies, (tennis) fields of one’s own, and losing as a form of winning.