"I wanted to create a space for art and for the people who do not always fit naturally within established structures.

A place where emerging artists and other sub-cultured creatives could present their work, meet an audience and build something together".

//Jakob Hindhede

Our first projects took shape in the spring of 2015, back then by the name Novam Artem. We started with pop-up exhibitions, small publications and various attempts to bring art into spaces where it could be experienced more directly. And in 2017, we became Art Monday – along with the black rainbow that has followed us ever since.

Today, we work as an art platform, publisher and creative producer based in Copenhagen. Our work moves between exhibitions & prints, magazines & zines, clothing, various events and design collaborations.

The formats may vary, but the underlying idea remains the same: to give ideas the opportunity to become something and to create connections between people.

We have been described as a relation starter. That is still a fairly accurate description. Visual art is our starting point, but our work is just as much about what can grow around it. A meeting between an artist and a new audience. A conversation that continues after an exhibition. A collaboration that begins with a small publication and later develops into something else.

*a physical home

In 2019, we opened Monday Studio as its first permanent space. This is our physical home for many of the things we work with.

Monday Studio functions as a gallery, shop, event space, workplace and meeting place. An exhibition may occupy a single wall, a new publication may be lying on the table, and a conversation between artists, friends and visitors may become the beginning of the next project.

In 2024, BLÆKBAR joined as part of Monday Studio – a tattoo studio with it´s own identity, working alongside everything else that happens in the space. It has its own story, told elsewhere, but it is part of what makes Monday Studio feel alive.

We do not intend it to be a traditional gallery with a great distance between the art and the visitor. We let the work feel immediate, experimental, personal, unconventional and slightly rough around the edges. You do not need to know the right words or have a particular background to enter.

Curiosity is enough!

Monday Studio is therefore not a separate project beside Art Monday – it is where our ideas take physical shape, and where the people behind them can meet..

*art should be encountered

Art Monday works primarily with contemporary art, underground culture, illustration, graphic art, photography, small-press publishing and artistic practices that move across conventional categories.

Our focus is often on emerging, self-taught and self-directed artists. Not because one particular kind of art is more valid than another, but because many strong ideas surface outside the places that already have established doors, systems and audiences.

We try to build a bridge between this part of art and cultural life, and the people who might not normally visit a gallery. That does not mean making the art prettier, easier or less distinctive. It means making the encounter with it more open.

You should be able to walk in from the street, be struck by a work, ask a question, buy a small zine or simply stay a little longer than you had planned.

*one idea, several formats

Over the years, Art Monday has grown in several directions. We have produced more than 125 events and over 30 zines, alongside exhibitions, pop-ups, artists' books, magazines, art prints, garments and collaborations with artists, publishers and other creative communities.

Monday Magazine and our other publications give artists space in print.

Monday Misc brings changing projects, releases, drops and shows together in an open event format.

WE WEAR ART FIRST uses clothing as a surface for art rather than as conventional logo merchandise.

The Journal collects stories, interviews and the knowledge that can easily disappear once an event is over or the works have been taken down.

Each format has its own purpose, but they all come from the same place. Art Monday is the overall platform and production. Monday Studio is its physical home. The rest are different ways of publishing, presenting, wearing, experiencing and talking about art.

*what we stand for

Art Monday is not about fitting into a particular idea of what art should look like or who is allowed to be part of it.

It is about open doors, strong ideas, human connection and the persistent work required to make something exist. It is about taking art seriously without necessarily making the space around it overly serious.

The goal is not to gather everything beneath one polished surface. The goal is to create a clear connection in which different people and practices can retain their own identities while still being part of something shared.

Art Monday is still developing. New people become involved, projects change shape, and some ideas turn into something entirely different from what was first expected.

That is not a flaw in the system. It is part of how Art Monday works.

Art is where it begins. What grows around it is what allows it to keep living.