Silas Inoue
New Acquisition: Two Works by Silas Inoue
MAPS has acquired two works by Danish-Japanese artist Silas Inoue: Infrastructure (2020) & Disturbed and Disturbing (2025). In both works, Silas Inoue works with living biological processes. Microorganisms, bacteria and lichen form active parts of the works, meaning that they are not static, but can develop and change over time. It is precisely this approach to art that makes the works particularly interesting to MAPS.
When an Artwork Reproduces
Silas Inoue’s practice moves between art, nature and science, exploring the systems that humans are part of but cannot necessarily control.
In Infrastructure, microbial life forms a kind of microcosm that can evoke the ways in which cities grow, organise themselves and expand.
In Disturbed and Disturbing, Inoue works with an organism that emerges through the close coexistence of different species. The work thus explores symbiosis, interdependence and new forms of perception.
What the two works share is that nature does not simply appear as a subject. It is an active part of the artwork itself.
An Expansion of the MAPS Collection
The acquisition expands both the range of materials and perspectives represented in the MAPS collection.
For MAPS, public space is not only about people. Our shared surroundings are also shaped by plants, animals, microorganisms, climate, materials and a wide range of systems that exist alongside us.
Through Silas Inoue’s works, these often invisible relationships and systems are made visible.
At the same time, the works engage with some of the questions that define our time: How do different species coexist? What happens when we try to control living systems? And how are human lives connected to the ecologies and infrastructures that surround us?
As part of the MAPS collection, the works will be activated through exhibitions, interpretation and programmes, allowing their biological and ever-changing nature to be experienced and explored over time.
Acquired with support from the 15. Juni Fonden.
Meet Silas Inoue at MAPS 22 October
