The Populace at ARoS: when the world stops

The Populace is a new exhibition at ARoS in Aarhus, created by Danish artist Nina Beier and American artist John Miller. The exhibition opens on May 13, 2026 and will be on display at the Salling gallery until March 29, 2027. Curated by Signe Melgaard Mark, it consists of around 70 mannequins dressed in fast fashion as well as 47 photographic reproductions of historical portraits from the Historisches Museum Basel.

The whole world suddenly seems to come to a standstill

That's the feeling I have when I enter the Salling gallery at ARoS. I've gone in to see the exhibition, and I don't quite know how to react when I enter the room. The room is bare with concrete, fluorescent lights, visible ventilation ducts. Scattered across the floor are mannequins. Some appear to be talking to each other, while others stand completely still. A woman in a striped shirt has her hands folded behind her back and is looking into the air. 

I walk further into the room. A young man sits on a bench with a collapsible walking stick in his hands. He has blond bangs and glasses. He almost looks like he's waiting for someone. I stop in front of him and look down. He doesn't look up. Of course he doesn't, because he's a doll.

A people, united

That's what The Population does to you. It brings you into a state where you can't trust your own gaze. There are about 70 figures in there, and we can walk around among them vividly. We walk around and look, look, maybe sigh a little and discover. We are part of it and that's the whole point.

The work was created by Danish artist Nina Beier and American artist John Miller specifically for this space. They have been collaborating since 2018, and The Population is their most ambitious joint project to date. The title is difficult to translate. It lies somewhere between the masses, the people, and a population. None of the Danish words quite capture it. Maybe that's the intention. It can be difficult to put a people into words.

Because how do you portray all of us? How do you get an entire society into one room? Beier and Miller haven't tried to make a statistically correct sample. They've put together a random sample of people, and the randomness is exactly what makes it work. We could be anyone. We are anyone.

Clothes that are already dying

As I walk around the mannequins, it's the details that draw me from figure to figure. A pregnant woman in a lace top and sunglasses pushed up in her hair. A woman in a wheelchair in a black polka-dot dress. Mother and daughter standing close together, one in a purple onesie with stars, the mother in black lace with a green 365 bag over her shoulder. A small child with angel wings on her back and light purple boots, facing a row of portraits on the wall. I stay with her for a long time. The wings are feather-light, while the rest of the body is plastic.
The clothes are fast fashion. They are sorted from the Red Cross Aarhus and from the recycling facility Arbos here in town, where short-lived collections from the big online platforms end up because the materials do not meet European legislation. It looks new. And it is, more or less. It is just already falling apart.

I stand with a strange feeling in my body. There's something about seeing so much clothing at once, knowing where it comes from, and at the same time understanding that this is what we're going to buy. This is what we're wearing right now. We're dressed in something that can barely be called clothing because it barely lasts a season. And yet it's become our everyday life.

The faces that no one can remember

On the walls hang 47 portraits. Photographic reproductions of paintings, all from the magazines of the Historisches Museum Basel in Switzerland. When Nina Beier first visited the basement there, she realized that most of the portraits could no longer be identified. We don't know who the painter was. We don't know who the person depicted was. We don't know when they were painted. Question marks upon question marks.

I walk up to one of them. A woman from somewhere in the 1700th century, I suspect. She has a stiff collar and a calm gaze. She has known she would be remembered. She has paid for it. And yet she is now nameless.
That's what I can't let go of. That all these people who were once somebody have become nobody. The expensive painting became an archive and became oblivion. And yet they still hang here, as I stand in front of them, hundreds of years after they were painted. Cracked, worn, with small holes in the canvas. And yet intact. They last.

That's one of the things that hits me the hardest down there. These portraits have survived centuries, while the clothes on the mannequins have barely survived delivery.

Two classes, two times

As I walk around, something else strikes me. The portraits hang scattered, each one separate, each with its own unique face. They were painted to order, paid for by people who could afford to be remembered. It's the upper class. The power. The historical gaze on itself.

The mannequins, on the other hand, stand in clusters. They are the same in face, the same in body. They are us. The middle class, the everyday, the crowd. These are two classes that meet across several hundred years, and it is only now that I realize how accurately the work actually describes it. The citizens portrayed are long dead and forgotten. The mannequins are now.

The sound that isn't real

From all four corners come sounds. Water running somewhere. A motorcycle driving by, far away. It's fragments. Dripwise and without direction.

At one point, as I stand looking at a figure with a gray curly hair, the sound begins to build. Faintly at first, then a little more. It grows over a full minute, and just as I've gotten used to it, it triggers. I don't quite know what I heard. But I felt it.

The sounds come from reality. They are recordings used in films to signal reality. 

The eerily confidential

The English word uncanny best describes the feeling in the room. The eerily familiar. From a distance, everything seems homely. Up close, it dissolves. You stand in the middle of the mannequins and suddenly become part of the work yourself. The portraits look at you. The mannequins look at the portraits. And you stand in the middle, alive, and can't quite place what it is you're seeing.

It's an exhibition that can be experienced slowly. Stay a while, walk around and let your eyes find the details. It's only when you've been down there for a while that the connection really falls into place.

Practical information about The Populace at ARoS

From May 14, 2026, The Population will be shown to paying guests and annual pass holders and can be experienced until March 29, 2027.

The exhibition is curated by Signe Melgaard Mark, and in connection with the opening, a catalogue will be published with a conversation between the artists and the curator, as well as texts by Laura López Panigua and Jeppe Ugelvig.