Monika Sosnowska

'Artist of the Year 2025', Princess Estelle Sculpture Park, Stockholm
June 3, 2025

Past and present meet in the new artwork which will be inaugurated in the Princess Estelle Sculpture Park on Royal Djurgården this summer on June 3. The Artist of the Year, Monika Sosnowska from Poland, is internationally recognised for her architectural sculptures that reflect a particular period of time or social structures in transition. She often draws inspiration from buildings whose functions have changed, or which no longer exist. The commission for the Princess Estelle Sculpture Park is a large-scale, site-specific installation that links to a remarkable but almost forgotten royal history.

 

The inspiration behind Monika Sosnowska’s monumental sculpture Museum, is a royal museum project that never materialised. It was King Karl XIV Johan, the first of the Bernadotte dynasty, who in 1830 had plans to build a magnificent art museum in the Rosendal area on Royal Djurgården. Blueprints were drawn by architect Fredrik Blom, marble columns and other building elements were ordered. After ten years of preparations, the project was abandoned. The building was never realised, and the delivered marble elements were transported to a warehouse for storage.

 

Now, almost 200 years later, Monika Sosnowska has been given the opportunity to use eleven of the marble pieces from the proposed Karl XIV Johan art museum in her new sculpture. The nearly two-centuries-old elements will be integrated into six free-standing concrete structures, cast on site. The units can be seen as traces or memories of a building; a wall section, a portal, pillar or staircase. The five-metre-high composition is open and fragmented, as if the non-existent museum were under construction or in ruins.

 

The work Museum for the Princess Estelle Sculpture Park will be Sosnowska’s first public work in the Nordic region. "Monika Sosnowska’s sculpture for Royal Djurgården is based on a story that very few people are familiar with. We look forward to bringing history to life through this unique and magnificent installation. Karl XIV Johan’s art museum never materialised, but we are extremely grateful that Monika Sosnowska’s Museum is now being realised", says Sara Sandström, Executive Director of the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation.

 

The Artistic Council’s motivation for the selection of Artist of the Year 2025 reads: "Monika Sosnowska has become known for her monumental and innovative installations that challenge boundaries between sculpture and architecture, and question traditional notions of spatiality. By bending, twisting or deforming building materials, her works create a sense of instability and uncertainty while at the same time they can convey complex stories about societies in change, preserving memories that might have otherwise been lost."

 

The acquisition of Monika Sosnowska’s sculpture has been made possible through a generous donation by Elin Kling and Karl Lindman.

 

For more information, click here.

3 June 2025