EVENT: JAKOB KUDSK STEENSEN’S THE SONG TRAPPER (OCTOBER 17 2025–MARCH 2 2026, PARIS)
Jakob Kudsk Steensen: The Song Trapper
17 October 2025 to 2 March 2026
Curated by Claudia Buizza and Ludovic Delalande
Fondation Louis Vuitton
8 av. du Mahatma Gandhi
Paris, France
From 17 October 2025 to 2 March 2026, the Fondation Louis Vuitton presents The Song Trapper, the first Paris institutional solo exhibition by Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen (b. 1987). Part of the museum’s Open Space programme, the project continues Steensen’s long-standing engagement with ecological imagination, digital technologies, and the psychological registers of immersion.
Known for his use of game engines, photogrammetry, and generative systems, Steensen has spent more than a decade constructing virtual environments drawn from endangered or overlooked ecosystems: wetlands, saline deserts, submarine volcanoes, glaciers. His practice combines fieldwork with digital world-building, treating technology not as an escape but as a medium for ecological memory and speculative storytelling.
At Fondation Louis Vuitton, Steensen introduces his first character, The Song Trapper, displayed on multiple LED screens in Gallery 8. Originating from ink-and-watercolour sketches, the figure was transformed into 3D models and animated within responsive virtual landscapes. Speechless yet sonically attuned, the character navigates deserts and marshlands by gathering, remixing, and replaying sounds through instruments attached to its body: canisters, flutes, and resonant devices. Its journey is guided by a free-verse poem authored by Steensen, which appears as on-screen subtitles and serves as both narration and philosophical framework.
As in videogames, the landscapes shift in response to the protagonist’s gestures. Movement, sound, and environment form a reciprocal rhythm, suggesting an operatic ecology in which action and atmosphere cannot be disentangled. The Song Trapper is the first instalment of Evoker, a hybrid project unfolding simultaneously as video game and opera.
Collaboration remains central to Steensen’s method. For this work, he partnered with motion-capture specialists in Denmark, actor Iris Thomsen for choreography, and sound artist Matt McCorkle together with vocalist Lyra Pramuk to develop a layered soundscape. Perfumier Yann Vasnier contributed a scent that fills the gallery with amphibian and aquatic notes, extending the installation into a multi-sensory experience.
Curated by Claudia Buizza and Ludovic Delalande, The Song Trapper is framed not as a closed narrative but as a porous system—part moving image, part virtual performance, part spatial sound. It suggests that ecological thought requires new characters and grammars, forged at the intersection of myth, code, and environment.
The exhibition is realised in partnership with Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, which will host a solo exhibition of Steensen’s work in the Spring of 2027.