Lost and Found: Queerying the Archive
- an international exhibition of queer art curated by Jane Rowley & Louise Wolthers
Artists: Elmgreen & Dragset (DK/NO), Mary Coble (US), Ingo Taubhorn (DE), Tejal Shah (IN), Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (CA), Conny Karlsson (SE), Flemming Rolighed (DK), Aleesa Cohene (CA), Kimberly Austin (US), Cecilia Barriga (CL) and Heidi Lunabba (FI), Al Masson (FR/DK) .
Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, proudly presents the exhibition Lost and Found: Queerying the Archive, an international show of 13 contemporary artists focussing on memory and history in relationship to gender and sexuality.
Other Histories
How is history written? Whose history is told?
And what do we remember?
How can we create an archive of the private memories of gender, love and sexuality that have been erased by official archives? How do we store the feelings and intimacy that have been excluded from the writing of history? Lost and Found presents a series of spectacular, thought-provoking works that address these questions through artistic visions of histories compiled and performed from queer perspectives.
The works interrogate the past and traditional ways of preserving it, and address the lack of alternative narratives of queer lust and loss, homophobia and family break-ups, same-sex love and relationships, hate crimes and discrimination – pride and shame. Using the potent and emotionally laden detritus of society, like silent movie footage, a jukebox archive of pop songs and alternative family photo albums, the artists reconstruct the past as (we think) we know it.
Recasting the Past
Cecilia Barriga’s Meeting Two Queens recasts Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich as unrequited lovers, bringing two stars that never acted in the same movie together for the first time. Barriga remounts clips from the stars’ signature roles in silent film style vignettes to tell a dramatic tale of lesbian desire - made cinematic flesh.
In the multi-channel video work Lyric, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay sings sound bites from an archive of 1,000 love songs, from A-HA and ABBA to U2 and Stevie Wonder. What the artist calls his ‘heartbreak narratives’ are a unique remix evoking all the times when we too transcended the boy meets girl formula on the commercial airwaves - compiling the soundtrack of our own lives.
Choosing Our Own Terms
This sampling and remixing is also present in Tejal Shah’s video installation ‘What are You?’ – a visual celebration of and tribute to the transgender Hijra community in Mumbai. In a complex collage of sampled and archive footage they stand gorgeously jeweled and sari-clad against a dramatic black background quoting the Indian constitution of civil rights they have been denied.
The violence of discrimination is also in focus in Mary Coble’s powerful Blood Script, where in a marathon performance the artist had words of hate speech words like ‘dyke’, ‘queer’ and ‘faggot’ tattooed into her flesh without ink. The result - 75 blood prints on the water-colour paper pressed against her skin - you can see in the exhibition.
The restrictions and power of naming are also at the core of Conny Karlsson’s powerful statement on the labeling of transpeople in the installation I Am Other (Candy and Me) a video work restaging the iconic photograph Candy Darling on Her Death Bed by Peter Hujar. Andy Candy adamantly and poetically refuses the restrictions and expectations of mainstream perceptions of trans identity.
Everyday Legacies
Elmgreen and Dragset - famous for their memorial to homosexuals persecuted under Nazism in Berlin – invite the viewer into an alternative family album. The Incidental Self provides glimpses of queer life lived to the full: Dancing, drinking, kissing – and close-ups of cocks.
Canadian Aleesa Cohene, in the work LIKE, LIKE created specifically for Lost and Found, uses what she finds ín other people’s Hollywood B-movie VHS cast-off and hand-me-downs. Stored in her memory from the TV films she secretely watched at night as a child, the resulting video installation is a carefully composed compilation of hundreds of fragments of Hollywood films, sampling women's roles from mainstream culture in a very different storyline with two women.
The works in Lost and Found: Queerying the Archive don’t claim to challenge the global dominance of Hollywood or the religious right’s constant claims to ‘family values.’ But what all the artists offer is a voice for that which is socially silenced and unacknowledged – and the emotional and mental space in which to write and direct our own more satisfying unofficial versions.
Place: Nikolaj, Copenhagen Center of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Plads 10 - www.kunsthallennikolaj.dk
Time: Tues-Sun, 12.00 – 19.00, Thurs: 12.00 – 21.00
Heidi Lunabba’s Beard Salon
On the weekend of July 25th & 26th passing women (and men) can visit the Finnish artist Heidi Lunabba's outdoor Barber Salon, choose their own personalised beard, and experience a temporary gender and identity transformation.
Place: Nikolaj, Copenhagen Center of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Plads 10 - www.kunsthallennikolaj.dk
Time: Sat 25 & Sun 26, 11.00 - 16.00