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Handpainted mural / poster, 2025

— You reproduce this work in different languages. Tell us how it changes depending on the cultural context.

— Our first work with this slogan was a mural in Holbæk, a little Danish town 60 kilometers from Copenhagen. Then we repeated it again and again and again in many languages. These words are understood differently in different places. In the USA, for example, there’s a slogan "All power to the people" which was used by the Black Panthers. I think I actually first encountered this line in a hip-hop song, so it was in the back of our minds. We are active in discussions around open-sourcing, so we came up with "All data to the people" as a clear reference to "All power to the people", but also as a way to express our belief that we can only make our own choices based on knowledge.

SUPERFLEX

In China, we were censored. If you are going to make an exhibition in China, it will be tightly controlled. When they saw the translation of the text, they said that it was not acceptable. So, first we painted the slogan, then blacked it out, but did it in such a way that the letters were still visible, thereby emphasizing precisely the point we were trying to get across. I’m positive that self-censorship works differently in Russia. I know that there you have to censor yourself all the time, for your own safety and that of your community. Therefore, the slogan in Russian will also be blacked out.

It’s a strategy we’ve often employed. In Brazil, for example, we had been working in the Amazon with local farmers who produce a soda from caffeinated berries called Guarana. Brazilians love the drink and consider it to be a part of their identity. As it turns out, the Guarana brand is actually owned by a Belgian company. The farmers were telling us that they couldn’t survive anymore because they were earning too little money from their raw materials. So we decided to put a spotlight on the issue by producing a new and better version of Guarana, which would be directly owned by these farmers.

We started making the soda and displayed it at the Venice Biennale. Then, the same curator wanted to show the work at the São Paulo Art Biennial, but we got a call telling us that we weren’t allowed to exhibit our work because of that other brand. So we ended up censoring all of it: covering up the labels and posters. The first question from a journalist at the opening press conference was: how come SUPERFLEX and the farmers’ product is being censored? For us, that’s an example of leveraging cultural capital through self-censorship.

— I think this slogan is especially relevant in 2025, when tech company owners are expressing their loyalty to Trump's policies.

— It’s super scary what’s going on right now. But somehow, I appreciate the fact that the manipulative power of these major institutions is now obvious. When the Internet first appeared, we all saluted it as a kind of anarchy, a path to freedom, or at least as something useful. I still believe that it provides access to so much.

But now we have to train our children to verify, know their sources, rely on different people and media sources, and then make their own choices about how to use this information. It also requires you to take on the role of a participant rather than just a passive user. Every piece of information has been filtered, it is communicated by someone, like a journalist or a historian..We have to be very, very good at learning what to do with that information, how to archive it, how to build our own knowledge and beliefs. We have to just be a little more critical.

I understand this slogan as follows: it calls not only for access to data, but also for a better understanding of the plurality and the complexity of knowledge, and what you do with it. At the end of the day, you have the responsibility and power as an individual to use that knowledge towards something. You can just follow along - and that’s often the easiest option – or you can propose alternatives and do things differently.

*The Russian translation used in the show is «Данные народу» (“Data to the people”). In Russian, the word «данные» means “data” (information or indicators that describe things) and also “something that was provided to someone.” That’s why the whole slogan can be read in two different ways: “Data to the people” or “Something that is given to the people” — for example, their rights.

Daniel Stjerne / @superflexstudio

SUPERFLEX is a group founded by three artists: Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Rosengren Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen. The group’s work goes far beyond the usual boundaries of art: like the Soviet avant-garde artists who designed workers’ clubs, the artists produce and offer a wide variety of artworks and products. For example, they partnered with brewers to develop "Free Beer" — their own brand of beer that can be produced by anyone. They created the "Superkilen" park in Copenhagen together with residents from neighboring houses, filling the park with urban details that reminded residents of their home countries or travels: a neon sign from Qatar, a bicycle parking lot from Finland, public bathrooms modeled on bathrooms in UN buildings and other powerful institutions.

The creation of various replicas, often large and complex in execution, is a characteristic technique of SUPERFLEX. One of the group’s main principles is expressed in the slogan "If Value Then Copy", which refers to their critical attitude towards copyright.

Besides their focus on the free dissemination of ideas, their work also deals with other important themes such as the imbalance of power in society, immigration, the climate crisis, and coexistence with other biological species. Currently, the group is creating objects that can serve as sculptures on land and as homes for fish and other sea creatures underwater.

Fenger, Nielsen and Christiansen founded SUPERFLEX in Copenhagen in 1993. The group has had solo exhibitions in Basel, Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, and collaborated with Tate Modern and many other prestigious institutions. SUPERFLEX has participated in the Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Sao Paulo Biennial and Gwangju Biennale. Their work is included in the collections of MoMA, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthaus Zürich, and other institutions. The members of the SUPERFLEX group live and work in Copenhagen.