Tracey Emin, My Bed, 1998

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John Peter Nilsson writes:

'What happens when an artist points to a store-bought object and says, “This is art”? Or when they take a famous image and twist it into something new? Welcome to the world of readymades and appropriation in visual art - two concepts that flipped the art world upside down. It all started in 1917 when Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to an art exhibition, titled it Fountain, and called it art. Think Andy Warhol’s soup cans or Sherrie Levine re-photographing famous photographs. Appropriation isn’t just borrowing—it’s about rethinking. Both readymades and appropriation force us to reconsider what art is. Sometimes, it’s not about creating something new - it’s about seeing what’s already there, differently.' 

John Peter Nilsson is currently communicative museum strategist at Moderna museet in Stockholm. He has previously been the director at Moderna museet in Malmö and exibition curator and programme director at Moderna. He has also worked as an independent curator for several exhibitions in Sweden and abroad, among others for The Nordic Pavilion at The Venice Biennale 1999.

Part of triptych Klas Barbrosson, SNETT/INÅT/BAKÅT (Terrorboll), 2025. Photo: Mikael Olsson.