Tone Olaf Nielsen

For the past 25 years, Tone Olaf Nielsen has worked to produce social, political, and systemic change for and with people in vulnerable and marginalized life situations through socially engaged democratic curation and organization building.

She is co-founder of the curatorial collective Kuratorisk Aktion (2005–20), which has curated major contemporary art exhibitions and campaigns responding to some of the global crises facing the world community – (neo)colonialism, structural racism, and forced migration. She is also co-founder of the organizations Trampoline House: Copenhagen Refugee Justice Community Center (2010–22) and CAMP / Center for Art on Migration Politics (2015–20), which in various ways have worked to improve the legal status, equality, and participation of refugees and asylum seekers in Danish society.

Most recently, Tone curated Médecins Sans Frontières Denmark's 50th anniversary exhibition titled “Every Life Counts: 50 Years with Médecins Sans Frontières” (2021) and developed the Drug Users’ Museum located at the Danish Drug Users’ Union in Copenhagen (2023). In 2025, she joined the organization AKK – Communal Art Clubs to curate “RIGHT TO HOME”, a cross-sectoral project that over a three-year period explores how art can foster community and a sense of home for unhoused people and people facing housing insecurity in Denmark’s social housing sector.

As a rule, Tone curates at the intersection of the artistic and sociopolitical fields in close collaboration with fellow curators, artists, and the community groups whose struggles the projects address.

Links to projects:
https://brugerforeningen.dk/stofbrugernesmuseum/
https://www.trampolinehouse.dk/about
https://campcph.org/
https://denfrie.dk/udstilling/tupilakosaurus/
https://www.rethinking-nordic-colonialism.org/
https://minority-report.dk/
https://welcometolace.org/lace/democracy-when/

Nothing about us without us!

For the past 25 years, Copenhagen-based independent curator Tone Olaf Nielsen has worked to produce social, political, and systemic change together with people in marginalized and invisibilized life situations through socially engaged democratic curation and organization building. As a general rule, she has carried out this work in close collaboration with other artists, curators, and the community groups whose struggles the projects have addressed. In her presentation, she will address some of the key projects and methodologies.