O Future, the artist duo composed of South African visual artist Katherine Mills Rymer and Danish composer Jens Bjornkjær—has long blurred the boundaries between art, music, and speculative world-building. Known for their genre-defying performances and conceptual installations, the pair craft lush, multi-sensory environments that merge the ancient with the futuristic, the mythic with the digital. With backgrounds in opera, classical composition, and fine art, their practice spans continents and disciplines, producing works that are as cinematic as they are philosophical.
Their latest project, “ENTER AFTERLIFE“, transforms Copenhagen’s Thorvaldsens Museum into a portal between eras and realities. Unfolding across the museum’s neoclassical north wing, the exhibition invites visitors on a surreal journey through the Greek underworld, filtered through a contemporary lens shaped by gaming aesthetics, digital simulations, and immersive audio-visual storytelling.
“Bertel Thorvaldsen was Denmark’s first international superstar. Thorvaldsens Museum is not only home to his spectacular sculptures and collections, but also to his own grave. The house is therefore both a museum and a mausoleum,”
— Katherine Mills Rymer, O Future
Echoing the trials of mythological figures, the exhibition unfolds like a quest through Hades to Elysium. Hand-drawn digital projections flicker across 19th-century marble walls, reanimating the sculptures of Thorvaldsen—himself a master of neoclassical reinterpretation—with luminous drawings and ambient sonic layers. The result is an installation that collapses time, blurring the distinction between marble permanence and digital ephemera.
“In our work, we imagined Thorvaldsen traveling through the underworld of Greek mythology,”
— Katherine Mills Rymer, O Future
Each sound piece is tailored to a specific sculpture, often referencing the musical instruments depicted in the figures themselves—Apollo’s lyre, Mercury’s flute. These ancient symbols are given new voice through manipulated electronic choir arrangements and spatialized audio, creating a synesthetic encounter between vision and sound.
“O Future gives us the opportunity to step directly into simulated visions of the afterlife in antiquity. This creates a tension between Thorvaldsen’s neoclassical sculptures and our digital era, opening a historical dialogue on the soul’s journey, the mystery of the underworld, and what happens after life in a time where technology and mythology converge,”
— Siri Buric, Curator, Thorvaldsens Museum
More than a visual spectacle, “ENTER AFTERLIFE” poses philosophical questions about death, transcendence, and the nature of reality. By structuring the visitor’s passage through the museum like a videogame narrative—complete with trials, progression, and transformation—O Future gestures toward the increasingly blurred line between mythology and simulation theory.
“No one knows precisely what Thorvaldsen’s religion or beliefs were, but we viewed the museum as a place filled with clues. Its construction and decoration are steeped in Greek myths, aesthetics, and grandeur. That was the inspiration for the central idea behind the exhibition: That perhaps we all exist in a simulated digital reality, where in both life and the afterlife, we undergo the same trials,”
— Katherine Mills Rymer, O Future
“As we delved into the myths, we realized their many parallels to modern video games: The individual must navigate challenges in order to reach the end or to win. That’s why we contrasted ancient conceptions of death with contemporary ideas from gaming, fantasy, and simulation theories,”
— Katherine Mills Rymer, O Future
The exhibition opens with a dramatic live performance on May 17 in the museum’s grand entrance hall. Visitors can recline on the floor or wander through the space as music, projections, and sculptures interweave in a synesthetic experience.
“On opening night, guests could lie on the floor or stand in the hall and experience how the sculptures ‘play,’ supported by electronically manipulated choir and music,”
— Katherine Mills Rymer, O Future
The performance will be followed by drinks and music in the museum’s inner courtyard, officially hosted as part of the Art Matter festival’s ArtBar program. The full exhibition runs from May 18 to June 29, offering audiences a limited but intense opportunity to enter an afterlife of both ancient memory and speculative imagination.
As myths return to us through new forms—pixels, beats, code—ENTER AFTERLIFE reveals that the boundary between past and future, body and spirit, sculpture and screen, may be more porous than we ever imagined.
Exhibition Details
ENTER AFTERLIFE by O Future
Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen
May 18 – June 29, 2025
Opening performance: May 17 at 20:15 (Art Matter Festival)
More info: www.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk