> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.catapult-platform.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Basement Is Where the Power Waits - Esben Weile Kjæ - URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/esben-weile-kjaer-lions-st-chads/ - Published: 2026-04-02T08:38:27.000Z - Updated: 2026-04-02T08:38:27.000Z - Description: St. Chads Projects presents Lions by Esben Weile Kjær at King's Cross. A monumental golden inflatable rat in a former hospital room. Curated by Benjamin Orlow - Author: Dominique Catherina Foertig - Tags: Exhibition **Lions - St. Chads Projects** **Artist:** Esben Weile Kjær **Exhibition:** Lions **Venue:** [St. Chads Projects](https://www.stchadsprojects.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **City:** London, UK **Dates:** 15 February 2026 \- 30 May 2026 **Open:** By appointment **Curator:** Benjamin Orlow **Photography:** Studio Adamson **Image Courtesy:** Courtesy St. Chads Projects ## St. Chads Projects Presents *Lions* by Esben Weile Kjær in London The stories cities tell about themselves require a certain kind of creature to hold the underside. Not the ones that circle monuments or nest in civic statuary, the ones that move in the dark, beneath the palace floor, under the stored crown jewels. What such a creature means depends entirely on who is telling the story: pest to some, emblem to others, sleeping giant to a few. The body itself does not change. It waits. There is a particular force in elevation, in taking what a culture has decided to despise and casting it in gold. The gold does not sanitize. It insists. It argues that the creature was already worth looking at, that the problem was never the creature. > *To name a rat Lion is not irony. It is a corrective. The animal has not changed, only the naming has.* [**St. Chads Project Space**](https://www.stchadsprojects.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art), the former hospital storage room near King's Cross where [**Esben Weile Kjær**](https://www.instagram.com/esbenweile/?ref=catapult-platform.art) has installed *Lion*, is not a white cube. It is a holding room: white-painted brick walls, black polished concrete floor, strip lighting running along the industrial ceiling. The space carries the memory of institutional function, things were stored here, processed, held. Kjær's golden inflatable rat now occupies it so completely that there is no vantage point from which to take it all in. The visitor steps through the doorway and meets the animal head-on. ![Esben Weile Kjær Lions installation detail showing reflective gold material and soft sculptural form, London exhibition](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/Lions-exhibition-artist-Esben-Weile-installation-view-1.webp) ****Esben Weile Kjær**, **Lions*, installation detail, ****St. Chads Projects**, London. Courtesy of St. Chads Projects. Photo by Studio Adamson. ![Detail of Esben Weile Kjær Lions installation, metallic gold inflatable form with stitched seams, St. Chads Projects London](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/must-see-exhibiton-london-current.webp) ****Esben Weile Kjær**, **Lions*, detail view, ****St. Chads Projects**, London, 2026\. Courtesy of St. Chads Projects. Photo by Studio Adamson. ![Esben Weile Kjær Lions installation detail showing reflective gold material and soft sculptural form, London exhibition](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/Lions-exhibition-london.webp) ****Esben Weile Kjær**, **Lions*, installation detail, **St. Chads Projects**, London. Courtesy of St. Chads Projects. Photo by Studio Adamson ![Large-scale gold inflatable rat by Esben Weile Kjær filling exhibition space, Lions at St. Chads Projects London](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/esben-kjaer-artist.webp) ****Esben Weile Kjær,** **Lions*, exhibition view, ****St. Chads Projects**, London. Courtesy of St. Chads Projects. Photo by Studio Adamson. *Lion* (2025, fabric, motor) is rendered in deep gold, a surface that catches the overhead light unevenly, shifting between brilliance and shadow as you move around it. Up close, the fabric reveals what it is: seamed, stitched, assembled from panels. Concentric circles of thread surround what appears to be the inflation point, almost like a target, or a navel, or the slow ripple of something just dropped into still water. The eye is small, sunken, apparently closed. The paws are tucked. The tail coils somewhere behind the body. Nothing about the posture suggests aggression. This animal is sleeping, or holding something that carries the weight of sleep. The work holds several lines of thought at once. Kjær grew up within the political symbolism of this particular creature: in Denmark, the rat has served as an emblem across the full ideological spectrum, from punk and queer subcultures to far-right nationalist groups, appearing on flags and posters at demonstrations organized by opposing sides of the same social fracture. The artist himself spent formative years in Copenhagen squats and was active in protests against the rise of right-wing extremism in the late 1980s and 1990s. That biographical fact does not resolve the image, it deepens its ambiguity. An emblem that means opposing things simultaneously belongs to no one. ![Esben Weile Kjær Lions exhibition, monumental gold rat sculpture stretched across gallery interior, Londo](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/esben-weile-kjaer-st-chads-exhibition.webp) ****Esben Weile Kjær**, **Lions*, installation view with gold rat sculpture, ****St. Chads Projects**, London. Courtesy of St. Chads Projects. Photo by Studio Adamson. ![Esben Weile Kjær, Lions, exhibition detail with large gold inflatable rat sculpture inside gallery space, St. Chads Projects London](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/exhibition-curated-by-benjamin-orlow.webp) ****Esben Weile Kjær**, **Lions*, exhibition detail, ****St. Chads Projects**, London. Courtesy of St. Chads Projects. Photo by Studio Adamson. ![Installation view of Esben Weile Kjær Lions, oversized gold rat sculpture occupying gallery floor, St. Chads Projects London](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/esben-weile-kjaer-detail-inflatable-rat.webp) ****Esben Weile Kjær**, **Lions*, installation view, **St. Chads Projects**, London, 2026\. Courtesy of St. Chads Projects. Photo by Studio Adamson. Kjær has also folded into *Lion* the legend of Holger Danske, Ogier the Dane, the warrior from the time of Charlemagne who lies dormant beneath Kronborg Castle, the royal residence where Shakespeare set *Hamlet*, and who, so the story goes from the 13th century onward, will awaken only when Denmark faces mortal danger. The structural rhyme is precise: rats beneath Rosenborg Castle where the crown jewels are stored; a warrior sleeping beneath another royal foundation; a golden animal installed in a former hospital room in North London, breathing by motor, waiting for nothing in particular. Or waiting, perhaps, for the right moment. ![Esben Weile Kjær, Lions, exhibition detail, inflated golden sculpture surface with circular opening, St. Chads Projects London](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/Lions-exhibition-Esben-Weile-Kj--r-curated-by-benjamin-orlow.webp) ****Esben Weile Kjæ**r, **Lions*, exhibition detail, ****St. Chads Projects**, London. Courtesy of St. Chads Projects. Photo by Studio Adamson. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/Lions-by-Esben-Weile-Kj--r-detail4.webp) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/04/inflatable-large-rat-artwork-esben-weile-kjaer-artist.webp) ****Esben Weile Kjær**, **Lions*, detail, ****St. Chads Projects**, London. Courtesy of St. Chads Projects. Photo by Studio Adamson. The exhibition is titled *Lions*, plural, regal, heraldic. The work inside is a single sleeping rat. That gap between name and thing is where Kjær's argument lives. The sculpture does not announce itself. It does not argue. It simply holds the room, filling it from wall to wall, making the visitor a guest in something else's territory. What was always beneath the surface, it seems to say, was larger than expected. ### Follow on Instagram: [**St. Chads Project Space on Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/stchadsprojects/?hl=cs&ref=catapult-platform.art) [**Esben Weile Kjær on Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/esbenweile/?hl=cs&ref=catapult-platform.art) **About Catapult** This is an artist interview published by Catapult — an independent editorial platform for contemporary art, based in Vienna. We publish exhibition reviews, artist features, interviews, and critical context, with a focus on emerging and mid-career practices from Europe and beyond. [catapult.art](https://www.catapult-platform.art/) Want to be featured? 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