SUPERORGANISME

Invited to Munkeruphus museum exhibition, Denmark, 2024.
API CHAMBER - Group Work Project leader: Anna Maria Orrù. Architects: Jenna Gillinger and Olle Sahlqvist with help from Industrial design M1, Konstfack.

The exhibition SUPERORGANISM is the result of a long collaboration between poet and visual artist Morten Søndergaard (DK), architect and curator Anna Maria Orrù (IT), anthropologist and curator Annesofie Becker (DK). The trio has invited contemporary artists and a wide range of other contributors to create an installation about bees that cross-pollinates art, literature, film, sound with cultural-historical stories and materials from the world of bees.

The Beekeeper’s

Room

As part of the SuperOrganism exhibition, Olle Sahlqvist designed a Kenyan beehive for wild bees, showcased alongside artists from around the world. The hive follows traditional Kenyan beehive measurements, featuring wooden slabs between its wax walls.

Inspired by the Api chamber, the hive mirrors the aesthetic of a bee cell, with a front-facing window that can be opened. Its design starts small at the back and gradually expands toward the front, reflecting the natural behavior of wild bees, which prefer confined spaces and gradually enlarge their habitat as they build.