Born and raised by a single artist parent, I grew up in art museums, galleries, art schools, and my mom’s studio - aka our home (including the family car).
Got positively terrified, and left to pursue a more “sustainable” way to make a living. Travelled the world, concept developing, innovating, strategising, leading big commercial projects, earning plenty. Got bored. Missed art.
Went back to uni, immersed myself in childhood memories, art history and visual culture. Started my art career, as some would say, a grown-up woman. Worked for a gallery in London, a museum in Sweden, a British artist in Copenhagen, and most recently, curated the public programme and off-site exhibitions for a few years at the leading art fair in the Nordics.
These past years have ignited my passion for curation. Here I am, throwing myself in at the deep end - going freelance in the art world. Driven by the belief that more people out there share my conviction that art can, and must, serve as a means, a vehicle, and an accelerator towards a more inclusive, enlightened, compassionate and (hopefully) real quirky society.
Anna Fernsten Nilén is a curator, researcher, and cultural strategist working at the intersection of art, society, and lived experience. Her practice is grounded in an ongoing inquiry into how art can foster awareness - and, simply put, make us give a shit - about each other, our environment, and the time we live in.
Anna’s curatorial philosophy centres on human perception, empathy, and presence. She views art as both a mirror and a mechanism - reflecting collective and cultural memory while shaping our understanding of belonging, compassion, and care for the world we live in. Through exhibitions, writing, and collaborative projects, she seeks to create encounters that connect people to the sensory, emotional, and social dimensions of contemporary life.
With a Magister in Art History and a Double Master’s in Visual Culture, Lunds University and Art and Cultural Management, Rome Business School, Anna bridges the often theoretical academic world with the urgency of real-world practice. Her approach combines research depth with pragmatic curiosity a commitment to social sustainability and to rethinking the structures that define the art industry from within.
Her research and curatorial work explore the intersections between art, the body, and consciousness - focusing on presence, empathy, social sustainability, and art as a reflection of our shared reality. She seeks to bridge the theoretical and the tangible, translating research into lived experience and curatorial form. Engaging with questions of collective and cultural memory, her work examines how art can both reflect and reshape shared narratives of belonging and identity. Through immersive, multisensory, and phygital encounters, she explores how art generates embodied awareness and emotional resonance, investigating how exhibition design and curatorial aesthetics shape the viewer’s engagement - positioning art spaces as catalysts for empathy, connection, and reflection..
Professionally, Anna’s career spans two distinct yet interconnected worlds. For over a decade, she worked internationally in innovation, concept development, and cross-cultural collaboration, contributing to leading design and lifestyle brands including COS, Inter IKEA Systems, HAY, and Space10. This experience laid the foundation for her later shift toward the arts, where she brings the same spirit of experimentation and strategic thinking into cultural practice. In the art field, she has served as Associate Marketing Consultant at The Muse Gallery, London, Studio Coordinator for David Risley, Supervisor at Moderna Museet Malmö and Programme Manager (Public Programme) at CHART Art Fair.
She is also co-founder of XYZ, a mission-driven platform that empowers artists with business literacy, entrepreneurial tools, and community - creating pathways toward self-sufficiency and a more sustainable art ecosystem.
Kaarina Kaikkonen, We Need Some Hope, 2022, installed at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Video by Barsk Projects. I spent a week assisting Kaikkonen, attaching hundreds of recycled shirts forming a shape of a flower, which points towards the historical consistency of humanity’s basic needs, regardless of period, cultural paradigm or environmental conditions.