Sept. 2016.
Art in Embassy – A Pilot Project
Background and purpose
With the Art in Embassy project, the Danish Embassy in Washington, D.C., would like to see Danish
embassies as a focal point for promoting Danish contemporary art and design abroad - and, at the same
time, to present Danish cultural policies and the Danish system for supporting art.
The project in Washington lays tangible groundwork for a dialogue between Danish and American artists
and important cultural stakeholders and is, at the same time, an opportunity to create a platform for
branding Denmark in the US.
7000 American and Danish guests visit the embassy (residence and chancellery) annually, including political
decision-makers, high-ranking officials, important cultural stakeholders, journalists, and business leaders,
etc. Thus, the embassy (residence and chancellery) is an important rendezvous for Danish and American
interests.
Cultural diplomacy at the embassy in Washington
It is more rule than exception that design and architecture are the jumping-off point for introductory
remarks when guests come to visit - all the while, surrounded by the light, the transparency, and the
elegance of Wilhelm Lauritzen’s architecture and Finn Juhl’s design. This gives occasion not only to talk
about the architecture and design of the 1960s but also about the special position Danish design and
architecture have in an international context.
From an American point of view, the building signals openness and straightforwardness, transparency and
modernity, something American guests often attribute to the Danish mind-set. The way the building and
design reflect the Danish temperament is not accidental: Lauritzen wanted to create a particularly
’democratic’ building that was as far away from showy column-architecture as one could imagine.
The embassy is, thus, the epitome of ‘cultural diplomacy,’ though it was erected in 1960 before the concept
even existed. Here, the physical framework of the embassy is perceived as mirroring national values,
traditions, and ideas.
On this design and branding foundation, the embassy can also become a display window for Danish
contemporary art by disseminating its perspective and involving contemporary art, design, and crafts in this
story of Danish design and architecture.
Contemporary art as conversation
The goal is to display what is happening on the Danish contemporary art scene with a permanent exhibition
(min. 5 years) at the embassy’s residence, which will function at the same time as reception rooms for
official events. These are works that do not simply serve as decoration but boldly raise questions that can
foster conversation. Just as Lauritzen’s and Juhl’s design in their day helped set new architectural and
design agendas.
Art in Embassy can become an important element for branding Denmark in the US since contemporary art
can point toward central values in Danish society that, in an American context, can evoke reflection and
spur dialogue. Together with design and architecture, Danish art also plays a role in a number of other
features about the brand Denmark, including sustainability and green transition in a strengthened platform
for the export to the US of Danish products and solutions in these areas.
The Danish Art Foundation – democracy, professionalism, and arm’s length support for Danish arts
All the works displayed are purchased or borrowed as a part of the Danish Art Foundation’s lending
scheme. The purpose of this scheme is to provide citizens throughout Denmark with the opportunity to
encounter art of the highest quality where they go every day – in schools, libraries, hospitals, etc.
The foundation has also been responsible for the curation and mounting of the selected works in dialogue
with the embassy. The Danish Art Foundation has also helped ensure the artistic and professional level of
the overall project.
The general purpose of the Danish Art Foundation is to promote and support art in Denmark and Danish art
abroad. The foundation is financed by the state in accordance with the principle that the state is to help
promote and disseminate art to as many people as possible without political interference. Thus, politicians
set the economic and legal framework for the foundation, while different professional committees
distribute support for the arts and assess its artistic quality (the arm’s length principle).
Art in Embassy – a collaboration
The exhibition at the embassy in Washington is a pilot project, which came into existence in a collaboration
among the Danish Art Foundation, a steering committee from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
the Danish Ministry of Culture, and the embassy.
This is the first time the Danish Art Foundation has loaned such a large number of works to an embassy
abroad. The Danish Art Foundation has entered into this collaboration and the pilot project in order to
demonstrate what it means to lift the level of artistic ambition in the interior design of Danish embassies,
which creates the framework for many encounters between Danish and international culture and
diplomacy. The project is also an occasion to present the Danish democratic system of art support, which is
unique in the international context.
Evaluation and success criteria
In the first six months of 2017, the project will be evaluated in a report that will illuminate how a
collaborative project among the Danish Art Foundation, a steering committee from the Danish Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and the Danish Ministry of Culture, and the embassy came into being and show any
strengths and weaknesses in the program. Any possibilities there might be in the future for strengthening
the overall artistic thinking about Danish embassies will also be evaluated.
The second phase of the collaborative project with the Danish Art Foundation will be finished in December
2016 with a special focus on Danish design. It is a complete service and dinnerware set in new Danish
design for 30 persons to be used at representative meetings and dinners at the residence.
Success criteria for the project
- for the embassy to become to a higher degree a focal point for Danish contemporary art, design, and
crafts in the US and a display window that will help open the eyes of Americans to the art being created
in Denmark right now.
- for the Arts in Embassy project to contribute to branding Denmark in the US, since contemporary art
often sets up a reflective and conceptual dialogue on values and, furthermore, supports the broader
narrative about Denmark and other features therein.
The embassy as a place for art
37 new works were selected from a desire to provide some ’edge’ to the canonized 1960s functionalism of
Wilhelm Lauritzen’s building and, at the same time, to display something of the best from the Danish art
scene today. Therefore, the works play to a high degree on our expectations of what ’art’ is and how it is
created. There are no traditional paintings in the selection - instead, the artists express themselves in
materials that are not normally connected with art and, at the same time, use ‘old’ materials in new ways.
Many of the artists balance between crafts/visual arts/sculpture and experiment with materials and forms
of expression.
Art at an embassy is something different from art at a museum. People do not come there to see art, but
that is not the same thing as saying that the art does not mean anything when they come. As visitors,
people remain at the embassy for extended periods and may come back several times. Therefore, it is
appropriate to have works that ’grow’ on a person, that tolerate being looked at many times, that can
arouse wonder - and provoke questions, dialogue, maybe even debate.
The works respect the original intentions for the building (simplicity, buoyancy, light) - but also nudge these
values a bit. Humor is an important part of this! Many of the works have a disarming subtlety that knocks
the art down off its pedestal and invites dialogue. The playful, the inquiring, the experimental are in focus
and, particularly, in relation to everyday objects or actions to which we often do not attribute special
meaning.
Established artists whose works are represented in museum collections internationally and young, new
artists are included in the selection.
Correspondences between the works are created in their mounting and placement, so a natural narrative
and sequence arises.
FOYER
Steen Ipsen (born 1966)
In 2013, Ipsen received the Danish Art Foundation’s 3year working grant. In this connection, the Art
Foundation remarked that Ipsen is “one of the most
gifted ceramicists in the country.” His work is often
called ‘basic research’ because he investigates the
relationship between a form - and a decoration.
He is interested in process and investigates a theme
again and again - as with the two works, for example, here at the embassy in which he assembles ceramic
spheres to create an organic, effervescent shape. His works are often glazed, so they acquire a
‘lusciousness’ and an almost industrial look despite the fact that he has created a unique piece of
craftsmanship.
Ipsen is internationally-recognized and represented in many museums around the world, including Art
Decoratif in Paris and the Victoria & Albert in London.
The work in the foyer is called Bubbles 3 (2003)
and displays a theme he has worked on many
times.
The work in the dining room is called Organic (2014)
Louise Hindsgavl (born 1973)
Hindsgavl and Ipsen both represent a renewal of the Danish ceramics
tradition for which they have harvested great international recognition.
Together, they have been given the chance to leave their mark on the
entrance to the embassy, each with a work on a small Finn Juhl table as
a podium, which places their works at eye-level for visitors.
Through her figures in white-glazed porcelain, Louise Hindsgavl
interprets anew a genre that belongs to the classic 18th-century Rococo
repertoire of porcelain production: the conversation piece. This was an
object placed in the middle of a lavishly-set dining table to invite
conversation.
In the 1700s, these were idyllic scenes
and idealized figures. Hindsgavl
challenges the conversation piece - her
figures are immediately inviting but,
upon closer inspection, often disturbing,
contorted, inhuman. She plays with
titles, which help stress their
uncanniness. For example, the little
creature in the sculpture in the foyer is
deformed, with hands and feet that have
grown into the tree stump - and the title
is uncanny as well: But I Still Remember
the Sound of My Footsteps (2012).
Hindsgavl has also received the Art Foundation’s 3-year working grant and is represented in various
museums in Denmark and abroad: In the US, for example, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Museum
of Art and Design in New York, and the ASU Art Museum, Arizona.
Anne Bjørn (born 1954)
Anne Bjørn works at the intersection between weaving/tapestries,
visual arts, and sculpture. Her works are, as a starting point, twodimensional, but she weaves shadow in as an essential element and,
thus, challenges the tapestry as a surface. Instead, her works become
almost sculptural. At the same time, she does not use traditional
threads as materials. She uses paper yarn on which she paints acrylic
colors. She herself says: “I am attracted by paper materials because it
is so ‘brittle.’” The first paper weaves I did were closely woven. Some
of them I painted. In 2009, I did a very open work. I was interested in
"drawing with thread” and letting the shadow on the wall become a large part of the expression.”
The work in the foyer is called Rødt spind [Red Web]
(2013). You might say that Bjørn’s works are about
creating new space - and moods in space. Layers of
woven paper yarn are hung behind each other, and this
results in a complicated play of shadow on the wall
behind them. Shadow is used as an effect to amplify
the works.
The work in the living room is called Lag på lag
[Layer upon Layer] (2013). The weave is again done
in paper yarn and consists of 6 layers of open weave
in staggered layers. There are five gray/black layers
with a slight "quivering from a yellow layer,” as
Anne Bjørn herself puts it. She believes the work
can almost be understood digitally, since the
prominent black color gives it the sense of text,
codes, and symbols.
Anders Clausen (born 1978)
Clausen works with language in his art but not only with words or text. He
works to just as high a degree with text-related symbols that we all recognize
from our interaction with computer screens in connection with information
and word processing programs. In his work, Clausen examines how reality is
controlled by and subjected to programs that are supposed to help us but, at
the same time, control and limit us in relation to what is ’correct’ and
‘incorrect.’ Most people, for example, recognize the red zigzag line from the
Microsoft Word processing program.
In his work I Would Prefer Not To (Server Too Busy) (2013), Clausen combines
more computer-related symbols and text passages with poetry. Here, it is from
the American writer Herman Melville’s classic tale “Bartle by the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” from
1853 in which a lonely and isolated scrivener with quiet defiance meets every corrective with the words: “I
would prefer not to ….”
Most people probably recognize the feeling of wanting every so often to respond to the world with a quiet
’I would prefer not to…’ And probably also the feeling that your server is too busy…
A review in the newspaper Information says of Clausen’s work: “Anders
Clausen is interested in screen culture, our interaction with the computer,
our little clashes and our celebrations.… When the computer places a red
zigzag line beneath a word, Anders Clausen crawls beneath it and adds
the mechanical ‘I would prefer not to’ in reference to the figure of
Bartleby from Herman Melville’s classic ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story
of Wall Street’ (1853) in which the protagonist prefers not to do anything
at all. He cares neither to eat nor to sleep. He merely exists. Like a sullen
computer.”
The work is printed on a large vinyl banner (PVC), which would normally
be used for ads but which the artist here uses as a canvas. Like a
billboard, it is a large work that must be read at a distance, which is
exactly why it fits well in the foyer, where you already get an impression
of the work from the outside.
Anders Clausen is represented at the well-known Saatchi Gallery in London and Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle in
Munich.
Henrik Frederiksen (born 1967)
Henrik Frederiksen is a skilled carpenter who was later educated at
the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Thus, he has a keen eye for a
material’s utility, functionality, and design qualities. In addition to
running his own furniture company, he designs furniture for other
firms.
The embassy’s residence is filled with classic Danish furniture from
our ’golden age’ in the 1960s. Therefore, it seemed obvious to bring
contemporary examples of furniture design into the mix.
For Frederiksen, innovative thinking, function, detail, simplicity, and
lightness are the most important elements in his work with furniture
and products. He strives to produce furniture that is simple and silent
– every detail must have a clear purpose, and nothing may be made
more complicated than necessary.
An important part of Frederiksen’s work process is to challenge
materials and forms - and to ask questions about the designs with
which we surround ourselves. He makes experimental prototypes
and more sculptural one-time installations and uses these
experiments for renewal and innovation in his production.
Three works, the Freja Chair, Tipi Stumtjener og Knagen [Freja
Chair, Teepee Coat Rack, and The Peg] (2015), are just such
prototypes, which he has only made in very limited editions. The
furniture itself he made earlier in wood, but here he plays subtly
with the red/white barrier tape we know from building sites, road
work, safety signs - which denies access. Used in furniture for the
home, Frederiksen says instead, “Come in, take your coat off, and
sit down” - and, with humor, turns our usual expectations upside
down.
THE DINING ROOM
Anne Lass (born 1978)
Anne Lass, a German/Danish photographer, works with series in
which she investigates the relationship between nature, society,
and culture. When do they encounter each other? What happens?
And how do we adapt ourselves in cities, in the country, inbetween? Her photographs contain many small tales - taken from
everyday situations - that we all encounter but may not dwell on.
The three pictures in the dining room derive from a series of 60
works, called Wandeln (‘change’ in German). The photographs
were taken on a journey from her home in southern Schleswig
through Europe, Australia, and the US, and the motifs are, in part,
documentation of the photographer’s travels and observations on
the journey.
The photographs are strangely surreal because we are constantly confronted in a down-to-earth picture of
the everyday and close surroundings with something unreal. A polar bear? Horses in a parking lot? It seems
so staged, like a set piece; but, unbelievably, none of Anne Lass' photographs are set-ups or staged. This
gives the pictures an almost mystical character.
Her works are often called ’Untitled’ but with a place name added in parentheses. By putting the geography
in parentheses, she indicates that it is not, as such, documentation of where we are (like a typical vacation
photo, for example). Rather, it is the action in the picture and the small tales that are important. The three
works are called: Untitled (Chicago), Untitled (Milan), Untitled (Chicago) (2005).
The works have a traditional placement as a centered triptych above the sideboard. The dining room is a
space in which people are seated for a long time and in which conversation is given pride of place. Those
who do not look at Anne Lass’ nature look out on the manmade nature in the park.
Lass’ works have been shown in solo exhibitions in the US, Germany, and Denmark. She also regularly
participates in group shows throughout most of the world.
Mette Vangsgaard (born 1968)
Mette Vangsgaard works with many different artistic media - drawing,
water colors, woodcuts, collage, and ceramic sculptures. She says: “The
works show a spectrum of stories about Western civilization and our
problems generally. Some recurring themes are the effects of a world
in rapid change and the human view of nature.”
Like many of the other artists, she crosses genre boundaries - she was educated as a visual artist but also
works with ceramics. Today, ceramic is an especially popular material that is no longer reserved for
craftspeople or ceramicists.
Vangsgaard has a special interest in marginalized groups and ways of life, which she believes often
disappear because of a political and social desire for growth and development. The works are her way of
maintaining those ways of life.
Another recurring feature is her focus on everyday things - taking a nap on the couch with the dog, petting
the soft snout of a horse - with a keen eye for detail, which provides us with the opportunity to get down to
ground level and be reminded of sensual details - often in an encounter with nature.
The two sculptures in the dining room were a part of a collected exhibition called ’Lemon Moon,’ which
dealt with Vangsgaard’s own upbringing in a small Jutland village in the 1970s. The works are personal
recollections but seem very recognizable in their down-to-earth presentation. The exhibition’s poetic title
refers to a popular lemon cake, shaped like a half-moon - which, in its original form, was a classic Danish
afternoon coffee cake. Today, it is a sad, plastic-wrapped, and preserved classic available at every gas
station.
The work Bondemanden Arne sover til middag [Farmer Arne Takes a Nap] (2016) is a portrait of her
neighbor Arne Hansen, who always took a midday nap after feeding his pigs. Vangsgaard and Arne’s son
Claus moved the furniture in the living room around while Arne slept - as a prank. In Reunion (2016), we
see Vangsgaard on a motorcycle. She is back in the fields of her childhood, visiting her horse once again.
Vangsgaard has been represented at many major, international exhibitions, including The Armory Show in
New York. She received the 3-year working grant from the Danish Art Foundation.
Martin Erik Andersen (born 1964)
Like many of the other artists described above, Andersen also mixes
materials and genres. Originally trained in sculpture, he moves freely
among art forms.
The work in the dining room is a worn Oriental rug - silver-plated on
the back. It can be viewed as a monochrome, a surface with only on
color, but in reality it is a landscape of nuances in which the silver
becomes gold, almost white, and other places dark gold. This
coloring is a part of a process that will continue over time along with
the oxidization of the silver.
The work is not much for creating narratives. It is very unlike the other works in the dining room (Lass’
photographs and Vanggaard’s sculpture) - pure abstraction that nevertheless captures us with its
tremendous sensuality. However, with the work’s title, Andersen inserts many meanings and references
that we must try to make sense of in relation to the work. It is called: Lenity (Asmat/Ezra Pound), (2016).
Lenity means ’mildness’ and is often used as a legal term in
connection with a judgement – a lenient judgement. Pound
was an American poet, musician, and critic who was a driving
force in modernist poetry at the beginning of the 20th century.
He moved to London and was an editor for American
periodicals in which he helped discover and shape
contemporaries such as T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Ernest
Hemmingway. But in indignation over the horrors of the First
World War, he lost faith in England and considered
international capitalism to be one of the war’s causes. He
moved to Italy in 1924 and, throughout the 1930s and 1940s,
he joined the fascist movement and did radio broadcasts for
the Italian government in which he was critical of the US and
President Roosevelt. After the war, he was convicted of
treason. He became mentally ill and lived quietly in Italy until
his death in 1972.
The lenient judgment in the title may refer to the judgment that was passed on Pound – was there some
‘mitigating’ factor to his treason because of his role in culture? Or does it refer to the judgments that
Pound himself passed on authors by virtue of his role as a critic in which he helped pave the way for some
and closed off avenues for others?
Andersen allows his works to remain open to interpretation and maintains that the way he understands his
works is not the truth. As he says in an interview, his silver rugs are, “of course, also just fiercely beautiful
and empty - and that’s what they are supposed to be.”
On the occasion of Martin Erik Andersen’s 50th birthday in 2014, the newspaper Berlingske Tidende
published a portrait, which said, among other things: “Martin Erik Andersen long ago distinguished himself
as one of his generation’s most important visual artists .… the Middle Eastern pictorial tradition is one of his
recurring inspirations. In addition to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, he was educated at the
academy in Cairo - and, in his frequent fragile works, you may encounter a conception that he - and we as
observers - are rounded by an old culture and a rich life experience we might sometimes forget in our busy
lives and a society that strives to be very streamlined, fast, and often also superficial.”
Today, Andersen is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and has received the greatest Danish medals in
the art world - the Thorvaldsen medal, the Eckersberg medal, and the Carl Nielsen and Anne-Marie Carl
Nielsen prize. His works have been shown at various international exhibitions, and he is represented in
museum collections.
LIVING ROOM
Camilla Reyman (born 1981)
Camilla Reyman’s three works Guilty Pleasures #8, Guilty
Pleasures #9, Guilty Pleasures #10 (2015), like Martin Erik
Andersen’s, are also abstract and partially monochrome – and,
yet, not. When you come closer, you can sense how the surface
lives. The works are created through many layers of epoxy (glue
with a very high strength) into which she has put pigment. This
gives the works an exciting depth and, at the same time, a very
sleek surface.
The works seem to be simple and very sensual, but Reyman also includes references that can give the
works meaning. Reyman has sought inspiration for the works within the Indian tantra movement in which
abstract painting is used for meditation. You meditate while you paint - and use the painting to meditate on
when it is finished. Typically, minimal, geometric shapes, dots, and stripes are painted. In India, the method
has been passed down from parent to child, which is something that has been going on for many hundreds
of years. Through the process, one becomes a part of something greater, something outside the self - both
in time and in thought.
Camilla Reyman finished at the Academy of Fine Arts in 2013 and is one of the younger important artists
working in Denmark right now. She, like many of the other artists described, is obsessed with challenging
materials and genres. She moves between sculptural installations, conceptual art, and visual art. She
describes how she is searching for “something other and greater’: “I have for many years felt a need to
escape the civilized concordance my surroundings lull me into. I daydream about running into the rain
forest and learning the ancient wisdom of the shamans, but it always ends with me thinking that is a bit of
a challenge.... "
Tina Maria Nielsen (born 1964)
In the same way as Martin Erik Andersen on the other side
of the same wall, Nielsen takes her starting point in a
familiar and expensive artistic material: Bronze. She has
made use of a classic bronze casting technique, but her
motif is far from classic bronze sculpture – an electric cable
from her own studio.
Her work Stream (2014-2016) is characteristic of her
production of bronze casts. She takes ’humble,’ overlooked
everyday objects and uses the material to raise questions
about their normal functionality and visibility.
The work enters into a dialogue with visual art (two-dimensional) and sculpture (three-dimensional) – the
cable relates to the surface and the wall but, at the same time, sticks out as a relief. The work has a raw
form of expression that stands in contrast to the space in which it is placed.
Tina Maria Nielsen has been awarded countless honors for her work and several working grants from the
Danish Art Foundation.
THE LIBRARY
Mette Gitz-Johansen (born 1956)
Gitz-Johansen works with many different techniques – video, painting, and
photography. In her 12 pencil drawings at the embassy (10 in the library and
2 by the cloakroom), Gitz uses detail to explore narratives and hidden layers
of meaning.
The series is called Replacing (2014) and shows private possessions, an office
landscape, a kitchen, but focused on details and ’distorted’ in perspective, so
you as an observer always feels you have changed position.
Gitz is, thus, an extension of both Lass’ photographs and Vangsgaard’s small sculptures in the dining room,
which focus on small, everyday details - but, in the moment, they are focused on and zoomed in on, the
everyday becomes central for narratives about life as it is lived in its patterns and history.
THE SMALL ROOM OFF THE GARDEN
In this room, ceramics have been brought into play in different ways, gathering up the ceramic threads laid
out in the rest of the exhibition.
Rose Eken (born 1976)
The three Rose Eken works (the jacket, the shoes and the tape tower)
were a part of a large total installation – a meta-studio in clay in which
individual objects were a reproduction of Eken’s own workshop:
brushes, paint cans, utility knives, towers of rolls of tape, piles of art
books, coffee cups, a laptop - plus all the other small personal things
that the artist has in her workplace.
Painter’s Denim Jacket (2015) is a model of Eken’s own jacket, hung on
a peg - as if she has just been through the room and, in addition, just
deposited her sneakers there: Ash Trainers with Rivets (2015). In a
way, the objects seem very personal, almost like a self-portrait that
tells us about the artist.
The tower of tape balances somewhere between a very specific reproduction of something very everyday –
rolls of tape - at the same time that the tower in its totality appears to be a pure abstract and colorful
formation.
The three works are very typical of Rosen Eken, who takes her starting point in everyday objects, in real
events, and specific spaces; but, in some way or other, the objects become strangely unreal, glazed, frozen.
The materials and the surface make them anything but real; and, instead, we look at them as entirely new
objects that are strangely un-functional.
Eken is absorbed with calling attention to how we unconsciously give objects value, attribute meaning to
them, or read stories into them beyond their functionality. By being super-specific, she prepares the way
for a different way of working with narrative than, for example, Martin Erik Andersen and Anders Clausen,
who make use of clear references in titles.
Rose Eken and Tina Maria Nielsen both work with everyday objects from their own world. They are
interested in how the things with which we surround ourselves help create us as human beings.
Eken’s works have been shown at exhibitions around most of the world, including a number of solo
exhibitions in New York and San Francisco.
Julie Stavad (born 1987)
Stavad is a sculptor (works with three-dimensional art) - but, in the
series Kopper [Cups] (2016), she has thrown herself into very
different materials and media: photogravure. Photogravure is a
reproduction of photographs in intalgio printmaking: The image is
transferred to a copper plate, which is treated with asphalt and
resin powder and coated with chrome gelatin. After washing and
etching, a print is made with printing ink. The photogravure leaves
a residue or a texture on the paper, which in itself becomes a new
material - virtually three-dimensional objects are deposited on the
paper. In this way, the physical cup becomes a photograph, which,
in the photogravure, becomes a new object on paper.
Stavad has depicted some
inhomogeneous, finger-dabbed
coffee cups in ceramic, which she
made over the past few years. As a
starting point, the ceramic cups
were not conceived as works of art
but as ’exercises’ in fashioning clay
and learning to work with the
material.
In the series Kopper, Stavad has reproduced the cups larger than they are in reality. They become
oversized, almost intrusive, and you get the sense that you are a Lilliputian invited to tea in a kingdom of
giants. As in Eken, the everyday is nudged out of the zone of normality and becomes unreal.
Mette Winckelmann (born 1971)
Mette Winckelmann works with abstract forms of expression, but her
works also contain a conceptual content. In media such as painting,
textiles, collages, and installations, she takes her starting point in
communities, identity, gender, and freedom.
She is particularly interested in the customary and often symbolic
connections in which we use textiles such as, for example, patchwork,
which is associated with women’s recompensing work with decorating
and creating the blankets that warm us. Or the national flag, which is
identity-creating and connected with honor, pride, or warfare.
She herself says, “As far as media are concerned, I work a lot with textiles in different formats. The flag as
an object, phenomenon, and symbol for identification interests me. I use the flag’s authority and
authenticity to de- and reconstruct ideas and conceptions about ourselves and others.”
Types of Relations (2003) consists of material in two shades of color.
Both colors are broken up and put together again but now in an
open/loose construction in which many patches are sewn together
into an overall format. The whole thing is later mounted behind a glass
case in which you would normally see expensive paintings.
Winckelmann has not done anything to hide the process that is behind
the work. Rather, it stands out as a central part of the work’s overall
expression.
The textiles may very well be reminiscent of a flag with simple shapes
and colors that can be read from a long distance - but, as they hang
there, ripped into pieces and loosely put back together, the flag’s
simple structure becomes an image of dissolution rather than a picture
of a proud, united nation. Winckelmann is interested in how we
generate identity-creating hierarchies and patterns for our behavior this network of mutually-connected relations that helps forge a society
but, at the same time, maintains us in structures.