Originally founded as a platform for contemporary art, Kunsthal Aarhus has evolved into a centre for ultra-local practices, where the boundary between art and everyday aesthetics has all but disappeared. Local crews and artists from Gellerup, Brabrand and the city centre have turned daily routines into artistic expressions, where the way you dress, arrange your living room or run your kiosk is exhibited and discussed as a cultural statement. The kunsthal functions as an open lab where raps about specific addresses merge with cooking workshops from various cultures, graffiti techniques are taught alongside hairstyling, and beats are produced while participants learn to repair bikes or sew clothes.
Aarhus’er #1
Kristoffer Ørum & Emilio Hestepis: Aarhus’er #1 Kunsthal Aarhus closed on 2 November 2025
Aarhus’er #1 is a collaborative exhibition by artist Kristoffer Ørum and rapper Emilio Hestepis. Together, they reimagine the city of Aarhus through hip-hop, DIY culture and artificial intelligence, transforming Kunsthal Aarhus into a fictional version of the city shaped by alternative rhythms, graffiti and speculative memory.
The exhibition presents a 15-metre legal graffiti wall, a giant record player, lo-fi mixtapes, deepfakes, DIY furniture, and historical snapshots from a city that could have been. At its centre is hip-hop—not as a fixed genre, but as a set of evolving loca l practices. DJing, MCing, breakdance and graffiti appear in distorted, Aarhus-specific forms that blur fact and fiction, protest and play.
The show is the most expansive chapter to date in Ørum’s ongoing counterfactual project Frihed, lighed og hip-hop. But here, that work becomes something new—a shared platform developed in close collaboration with Hestepis, who also contributes an original soundtrack.
With thanks to Katrine Malinovsky, Mathias Borello, Hannah Mathiesen Keegan, Michael Bolt Fisher, Salling, Batch Productions, Brian Sørensen, Tania Ørum, and many more.
