Something is cooking at Nikolaj Plads

Right here in the middle of one of the city’s oldest squares, in a few Months the ripe barley will sway in the late summer wind. A small Piece of the countryside – in the middle of the city’s vibrant centre

As a part of the Golden Days Festival, almost 100 m² of cornfield will be laid out. Right here. Right

now. You can follow the process – from the early hand sowing of the seeds to the subsequent months of germination and growth – to finally be able to experience a golden harvest as the summer draws to a close.

The project is a reconstruction of artist Peter Bonnén’s iconic, rural work Cornfield at Nikolaj Plads from 1975. The artwork will be extraordinarily reperformed in connection with Golden Days 2023, the exhibition Kunstnernes København (“The Artists’ Copenhagen”) at Nikolaj Kunsthal and World Capital of Architecture 2023.

A golden cornfield in the middle of the city should make us talk about both the past and the future

of the land we walk on, cultivate and fight for. The project is a part of Golden Days, which this year lets the gaze wander far beyond the city’s roof tops to where the sky is high and enticingly blue. Towards our common cultural-historical roots and the “exotic other” – the countryside.

With the work Cornfield at Nikolaj Plads, Golden Days and Nikolaj Kunsthal wish to transcend the

distance between countryside and city, between modern man and nature, and between 1975 and 2023.

On Friday 1 September, Nikolaj Kunsthal and Golden Days will host an opening party, both

serving as the opening of the work and marking the start of the Golden Days Festival period, running until 17 September.