Sara Kaaman (b. 1983, based in Stockholm, Sweden) works with printmaking, performance and publishing. In her practice, she bends language using word play, voice and movement.

She is currently active in the collective constellations Munnen (a miniature culture house), MMS (a research group) and Girls Like Us (a queer feminist magazine). With MMS she published the book Natural Enemies of Books – A Messy History of Women in Printing and Typography in 2020.

Sara Kaaman holds a BA in graphic design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and an MFA in Choreography (New Performative Practices) from Stockholm University of the Arts.

She is a regular guest teacher at the Estonian Academy of Art in Tallinn, Estonia, and have lectured at CalArts, Virginia Commonwealth University, HfG Karlsruhe, UDK Berlin, and more. Between 2016–2025 she worked as Senior Lecturer of Graphic Design at Konstfack in Stockholm. Her work has been shared at for example Index Foundation, Stockholm, Moravian Gallery, Brno, Tate Modern, London, Istanbul Biennale and Art in General, New York.

Performances

The Algorhitmic Piano Bar is Open
Performance at Fylkingen, Stockholm. January 31, 2026.

A Book Knot Book Talks Back
Performance in collaboration with Laressa Dickey. The Page as a Stage symposium, Index Foundation, Stockholm. April 29, 2023.

A Knot Not
Solo performance. Stockholm University of the Arts, Stockholm. April 25–27, 2023

The Book – An Interfacial Sitcom
In collaboration with Ar Utke Acs. With performers: Mmabatho Thobejane, Roby Redgrave McPherson, Jon Ely. Leaking Container Festival, Index Foundation, Stockholm. September 19, 2020

17 personal questions posed to a set of rooms, movements and machines. Performance lecture at the symposium Glossary of Undisciplined Design, GfZK – Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany. February 21–23, 2020

Paper Food Rooms. Performance lecture, Design Museum Gent, Belgium. December 12, 2019

Exhibitions

Keep Experimenting! Le design graphique de Pontus Hultén à aujourd’hui
26–29 juni, 2025, Svenska Institutet Paris. Group exhibition

99g / Pushing the Envelope: An Exhibition of Mailed and Correspondence Art
November 1, 2024 – March 30, 2025, The National Museum of Computing, London. Group exhibition

On the Edges of Graphic Design from A—Z—∞
2 October—11 December, 2025. A–Z Berlin, Tyskland. Group exhibition.

Inspiraling
14 November 2025–1 March 2026, CRAC Alsace, Altkirch, France. Group exhibition

Morphing Masses (part of the Nordic pavillion)
23 November – 26 December, 2023. Something Else Biennale, Citadel, Cairo, Egypt. Group exhibition

The Future as Negative Spaces
21–22 August, 2023, I:DI Gallery, Stockholm. Group exhibition

GRAPHIC.DESIGNERS.COLLECTORS.
15 December 2021–17 February 2022. A–Z Berlin, Berlin. Group exhibition

Tracking Distribution
27 November 2020–31 January 2020, Index Foundation, Stockholm. Group Exhibition.

WWW & FASA
May 15–18, 2019, Västerås Konstmuseum. Solo exhibition.

A break can be what we are aiming for
April 26–July 1, 2018. Lacapella, Barcelona, Spanien. Group exhibition, with Girls Like Us.

The Natural Enemies of Books
December 11 2017–January 14 2018, Konstakademien, Stockholm, Sweden. Solo exhibition with MMS.

27th Brno Biennale of Graphic design, Moravian Gallery, Brno. With Girls Like Us magazine.
June 16–October 30, 2016

Jimmy Merris London
October 10–December 8, 2013. Bloomberg Space, London, England. Solo exhibition, as Studio SM.

Paper Weight — Genre-defining Magazines 2000 to Now.
July 12–October 27, 2013. Haus der Kunst, München, Germany. Group exhibition.

Design of floor print for Every Ocean Hughes’ performance I am a helicopter, camera, queen, Tate Live Performance Room, Tate Modern, London, 2012

Book on the Fritz
30 May–30 September, 2012. Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden.

Exhibition as Discourse as Disco
September 17, 2011. Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, Turkiet. Group exhibition.

Something red, something blue, something orange, something new
25 March–7 May, 2011. Art in General, New York, USA. Solo exhibition.

Purning Toints: Young Graphic Design
4–17 February, 2011. Four Boxes Gallery, Skive, Danmark. Group exhibition.

Publications

'Oraklets Ark' in Reaching Out: A Book on Agency, Care, Identity and… (Rooftop Press, 2026)

Visual essay in On the Edges of Graphic Design from A—Z—∞, edited by Anja Lutz & Soraya Guimarães Hoepfner (Set Margins, 2025)

Review of ‘Paper sleeps on top of paper’ Oda Brekke’s performance Dead Dead Document at MDT, Stockholm, March 24, 2024. Published in Ravel Review (2024)

Visual essay: I Can’t Believe We Still Have to Protest This Shit, in Girls Like Us #14 – Letters of Disappointment (2023)

Poem: ‘The rhythms of…’ in the book Kijk!: On Offset & Letterpress Printing in Education (Gerrit Rietveld Academie, 2023)

Book: A Book Knot Book, written, edited, published by Sara Kaaman (Body Text, 2023 / 2025)

Essay: ‘bodies, rooms, movements, fictions’ in Glossary of Undisciplined design, eds. Anja Kaiser & Rebecca Stephany, published by Spector Books, Leipzig (2022)

Interview: Open Archive & Interview with MMS published in Graphic Magazine #47 Current Issue (2022)

Interview: with MMS in Beyond Walls – Grafikens Hus the Mobile Years 2014–2021 (2022)

Essay: ‘Anyone With a Link Can Edit’ published in Art Writing in Crisis, edited by Brad Haylock and Megan Patty, published by Sternberg Press (2021)

Book chapter: Maryam Fanni, Sara Kaaman and Matilda Flodmark, ”Press On!–Feminist Historiography of Print Culture and Collective Organizing” in Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History, ed. Briar Levit, Princeton Architectural Press (2021)

Book: Natural Enemies of Books – a Messy History of Women in Printing and Typography, edited by MMS, published by Occasional Papers (2020)

Poetry: ‘wave to print’ published in Urgency Reader (ed. Paul Soulellis) (2019)

Essay: ‘Can A Book’, essay published in Återskall / Again Bark (2019), an anthology of texts and images that respond to Det kommande skallet / The Coming Shall (designed by Sara Kaaman) from 2017, part of Imri Sandströms artistic research project “Howe Across Reading - Performing the Past” Valand Academy of Fine Arts, Göteborg

Essay: ‘Welcome to Jurassic Park – on the typography in OEI #73–74’ published in OEI #75–76 : NATURBEGREPPET [EKOEI] (2017)

Workshops

HIC . EST . TUUM . HORA . HIER . IS . UW . UUR . HÄR . ÄR . DIN . TIMME .
4 day workshop with graphic design and photography students at Estonian Academy of Art, Tallinn. In collaboration with Katja Mater. March 2024

HOW DO YOU DO, 4 day workshop with MA Graphic design year 1, Estonian Academy of Art, Tallinn, October 2023

Digestive Thinking, workshop at the symposium A Thinking Practice, Stockholm. June 2022

'read the room' or 'stop making sense' or 'crawling around the edges of language', 4 day workshop with EKA MA Graphic design year 1. March 2022

The Fire of Talk, Action and Care, Trojan Horse Summer School 2021, August 2–8, 2021
With Dorothy Zablah, Mercedes Balarezo Fernández, Sara Kaaman, Kaisa Karvinen, Roby Redgrave, Jaroslav Toussaint and Tommi Vasko.

"Recipes.For.Connection.S01.EP01.2021.HDTV.1080p.x264" Workshop with PUB Sandberg, Amsterdam. With Roby Redgrave McPherson, June 2021

Fiction Practice. Workshop with 1st year students at the MA in Graphic design at Estonian Academy of Art, Tallinn. April 2021.

Soft Logics. Workshop at the symposium Glossary of Undisciplined Design, Leipzig, Germany
February 22, 2020

Awkward Gestures. Workshop at Visual Communication Department at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA. March 28, 2019

Soft Magazine. 5 day workshop on experimental publishing & design practices with Girls Like Us magazine, at ”A School, A Park” – graphic design summer school, Montréal, Canada. July 7–13, 2018

Lectures + Talks

Full Body Yes – Somatic Compositions in Graphic Design, Universität der Künste Berlin, Tyskland, 1 June, 2026

Talk at the seminar Primitive–Reader / Hyper–Text hosted by Paul Bailey, University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe, Germany, 19 November, 2025

s h o c k i n g spacing – the typographic laboratory of jane grabhorn (with MMS), ‘working title’ symposium by the typographic society austria, Raabs, Austria, August 30, 2025

Natural Enemies of Books – A conversation (with MMS) Under the Leaf Art Book Fair, Helsinki, 7-8 September 2024

Counter Sessions #1 “Ever since the days of Mrs. Gutenberg …” A–Z Berlin, 18 August 2022

bodies, rooms, movements, fictions. HfG Karlsruhe Lecture Series – bodies in the system. May 20, 2021.

bodies, rooms, movements, fictions. CalArts Graphic Design Visiting Designer Lecture Series, April 14, 2021.

"WIZ* Jour Fixe 3" conversation with nicole killian on graphic design education & teaching, Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle, June 22, 2021

bodies, rooms, movements, fictions lecture at HfG Karlsruhe, May 20, 2021

The Classroom @ Printed Matters Virtual Art Book Fair. Messy Histories of Printing and Typography, a panel with Maryam Fanni, Matilda Flodmark, Sara Kaaman, Haytham Nawar, Danielle Aubert, and Madeleine Morley. February 27, 2021.

Afternoon Tea with Laura Martens, Joram De Cocker and Zoé Pecqueux at KASK School of Arts. February 25, 2021.

Soft & Awkward. Lecture at Visual Communication Department at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA. March 28–29, 2019

Panel discussion on ”FEMINIST PUBLISHING AND PUBLICATIONS” at the art book fair & symposium ”Making Public and Publics: Art Publishing in Context”, Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Tallinn, Estonia. June 7, 2019

Some reflections from a research in typography & history. One Day About Typographic Histories, seminar at Konstfack, Stockholm. October 20, 2018

Performative presentation of the text ‘Welcome to Jurassic Park – on the typography in OEI #73–74’ på Marabouparken konsthall, Sundbyberg, vid release av OEI #73–74 2016: Grön våglängd; parker, trädgårdar, växter (red. Jonas (J) Magnusson). November 26, 2017

All Bodies Conspiring. Lecture at REDO – International Graphic Design Conference i Pristina, Kosovo. October 4, 2017

Presentation and panel, Feministisk Formbar: “Conditions and responsibility for equality within graphic design”. Barbro, Stockholm. November 3, 2015

The Name of the Game, presentation at the seminar The Forms of Politics #3. A-venue, Göteborg. November 13, 2015

Designing a Feminist Future, lecture at Vancouver Art Book Fair. Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada. October 17, 2015

Welcome to the New Girl Order, lecture at Libros Mutantes Art Book Fair. Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain. April 24, 2014

Lecture at the conference Graphic Knowledge Fair. Warsaw, Poland. October 26, 2012