Upcoming:
1. The Taste to Participate
3. Gade Monster
8. To Lie on The Grass - A Manifesto
10. Doso Radio Station
How We Acquired the Taste to Participate
Kunsthal Charlottenborg (2025)
Set as a time capsule to the seven years leading up to the 2012 London Olympics. How We Acquired the Taste to Participate examines how the Olympic spirit—and its portrayal of children as symbols of effort, discipline, the future and hope—reshaped East London’s identity, urban landscape and imagination. The concept of effort is present in footage of children striving in Olympic sports, in the handmade set pieces and terms like natural talent, endurance, and genius. The reimagined podiums—here functioning as stages or viewfinders—shift from symbols of victory to contested sites of visibility. The work asks: who gets to stand there, to speak, and in what voice? - drawing parallels between sports and art.
The work is also a nostalgic lens into a time when hope felt more plausible, more performable. This “joyful sadness” balanced honesty and satire, operating somewhere between the two. built from documentary materials, the found footage and photographs are filtered through a fictional or satirical lens that acknowledges its own construction. For Lyons, the work also touches on the complexities of heritage. As an international artist in Denmark, how can one make art about their origins when the remnants of their childhood neighbourhood are merely ruins of a past random global event? The project interrogates capitalism’s comfortable and uncomfortable relationship with heritage—linked to inheritance and patriarchal structures—while acknowledging its potential as an obstacle to progress. Ultimately, How We Acquired the Taste to Participate is as much about critique as it is about affection. It reflects on how we become subjects, lingering in a space where resistance, nostalgia, and participation intermingle.