Opening of Rikke Luther : Dust & Flow - Mud in the Earth System

Join us on Friday, 2 May at 4:00PM when we celebrate the opening of Rikke Luther's exhibition Dust & Flow - Mud in the Earth System in Room Room.

For several years, artist Rikke Luther has worked with climate change in her practice-based research—most recently with a specific focus on mud and sediments, and how we, as humans, attempt to comprehend the accelerating transformations that our Earth system is undergoing. As part of her postdoctoral project Ocean-Lands: Mud in the Earth System, for which AHC is the artistic host institution, Luther now presents her research in a new exhibition at Room Room.

The solo exhibition Dust & Flow – Mud in the Earth System features photographic and textile works, but takes its point of departure in the film Dust & Flow: Muds, Movement, Time, Scale, which brings together recent scientific research on mud, environmental DNA and the concept of ‘deep time’.

The film—recently screened at CPH:DOX and selected for Arte, the respected Franco-German TV channel for European arts and culture—contains footage from Luther’s research expeditions to Greenland, Gotland, Iceland and Svalbard. Through a combination of personal and scientific reflections and a poetic, richly imaginative aesthetic, viewers are given insight into the vast changes unfolding in the Arctic—and perhaps even a new ethical and aesthetic language for the unfathomable environmental shifts we are facing.

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INFO

Rikke Luther: Dust & Flow - Mud in the Earth System
2 May - 16 Aug 2025

Opening: Friday, 2 May at 4:00-7.00 PM. Everyone is welcome!

Room Room
Thoravej 29
2400 Copenhagen NV

On Wednesday 4 June at 18:30, we invite you to join us at Room Room for a talk with Katherine Richardson, who will discuss her research alongside a new text she has written for an upcoming publication on Rikke Luther’s practice.

The exhibition has been realised with support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation, Baltic Art Center and AHC. Dust & Flow: Muds, Movement, Time, Scale has been commissioned by NAARCA, with production and research hosted by ROCS.

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ABOUT RIKKE LUTHER
Artist and PhD Rikke Luther (b. 1970) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1998. In her current practice, she investigates the movements in the ‘Earth System’ brought about by human-driven climate, environmental and biodiversity crises. Her work engages with themes relating to emerging landscapes, language, politics, economics, law, biology and geology, expressed through drawn mappings, photography and film.

Luther’s work has been presented at biennales and triennales including Venice, Singapore, Echigo-Tsumari, Auckland, Gothenburg and São Paulo; in museums and institutions such as HKW, the Smart Museum, Kunsthaus Bregenz, The New Museum and Museo Tamayo; in exhibitions including Beyond Green: Towards a Sustainable Art, 48C Public.Art.Ecology and Weather Report: Art & Climate Change; as well as at film festivals including CPH:DOX and the Perth International Film Festival.

ABOUT RIKKE LUTHER'S POSTDOCTORAL PROJECT
Ocean-Lands: Mud in the Earth System explores both the social and bio-communicative effects of shifting sea and land mudscapes, as part of a broader attempt to build a new ethical and aesthetic public language capable of communicating the crisis facing our Earth system.

Luther’s postdoctoral research is academically anchored at Queen Margrethe's and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir's Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society (ROCS), based at the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Globe Institute. The project is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and ROCS.

In collaboration with AHC, she is also working on a forthcoming publication featuring contributions from Esther Leslie, Karina Krarup Sand and Katherine Richardson.

You can listen to a conversation between Rikke Luther and Karina Krarup Sand, recorded in November 2023 on the occasion of Luther’s exhibition Mud in the Earth System at Astrid Noack’s Atelier, here.