The Scandinavian art duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have been producing large-scale installations and public sculptures since 1994, when they met, by chance, at a Copenhagen bar. Elmgreen and Dragset's work often incorporates human-like models inside created worlds that are eerily like ours, evoking a distinct, dark humor. In one work, The Afterlife of the Mysterious Mr. B, Elmgreen and Dragset staged four installations, each representing a phase in disturbed man’s life, from infancy to death. In one installation, a boy anxiously sits, holding his knees, at the edge of a dark and cold Victorian fireplace. Above the fireplace is a painted portrait of the boy. In a more humorous work, Sleeping on the Job, a woman sleeps in a stark-white bed as a golden vulture statue hovers over her on a post. They are, however, best-known for the permanent installation Prada Marfa (2005), what they describe as a "pop architectural land art project," for which they installed a replica of a Prada boutique along a remote stretch of highway in Texas.

Elmgreen and Dragset have been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including solo shows at the ZKM Karlsruhe, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Power Plant in Toronto, and the Tate Modern, and represented Denmark at the Nordic Pavillion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. They have also been included in notable group exhibitions at institutions such as the Hayward Gallery in London, the Centre Pompidou, the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA PS1, the ICA London, and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.