ISHØJ, DENMARK — Danish recycling artist Thomas Dambo will open his first museum exhibit, "The Garbage Man," at the Arken Museum of Contemporary Art on the outskirts of Copenhagen on Sunday. The exhibit will run through November 29, 2026.
The show tells the story of a group of trolls who secretly move into the museum, take it over and redesign it. The new works are based on friends Dambo had when growing up.
"They have personalities of a late teenage, young 20s type of group of boys that are causing havoc, and the type of gang that would break into a museum and fill it up with trash," Dambo, 46, said at his studio near the Danish capital. "They build and leave a giant human made of trash … as a lesson for the humans to behave better and don't put their trash where everybody else lives," he added.
The museum setting allows Dambo to experiment with materials that wouldn't survive outdoors, including discarded electronics, cardboard and clothes. A troll named "Dyna Dee" dozes on a 6-meter mound of discarded clothing from a local recycling organization in the exhibit.
Dambo hopes visitors will leave with an urge to buy less. "It's not really about recycling, it's about you probably have enough clothes in your cabinet to wear for the rest of your life," he said. "This is not my recycling project, this is my stop buying stuff project," he added.
For more than a decade, Dambo has scattered wooden troll sculptures around the world, choosing trolls — figures that often appear in Scandinavian folklore — as a vehicle to convey messages on waste and recycling. The sculptures are made almost entirely from waste and discarded materials such as wooden pallets, old furniture and whisky barrels.
He started spreading his trolls in 2014, when he built two sculptures for a Danish music festival. In 2016, he hid six giant trolls in wooded areas around Copenhagen, a project that drew millions of online viewers. "I was like, if I tell a story that combines them all, then when I've done this (for) 10 years, I will probably have made over 100 sculptures and … I have made the world into my stage," Dambo said.
As of 2026, Dambo has created almost 200 troll sculptures in 19 countries, and he and his team build about 25 new trolls annually. The tallest, "Long Leif," is 13 meters (43 feet) high and stands in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Others include "Little Lisa," hidden in a German forest, and "Happy Kim," in a South Korean botanical garden. The sculptures are usually tucked away in forests, mountains, jungles and grasslands and are discoverable using an online "Troll Map."
Dambo estimates about 5 million people visit his sculptures annually. "The sculptures bring people out to experience things that they would otherwise have been too lazy or maybe not creative enough to go and visit," he said. "My trolls, they bring people to all these small, little corners of the world," he added.