AHC showcases four Danish artists in South Korea

While CHART Art Fair unfolds at home in Denmark, four promising artists will venture to Korea’s thriving art scene to present progressive and performative works exploring spirituality, sexuality, and pain. The aim is for the international art community to take note of their names.

Esben Weile Kjær, Miriam Kongstad, Eliyah Mesayer, and Filip Vest have already proven themselves as some of Denmark’s most promising young visual artists. Representing a new generation, they have impressed the Danish art scene with their unique interdisciplinary approach, merging visual art with literature, theater, science, fashion, and music.

In late August, Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC) will send these four artists off to South Korea, where they will present performance works at the national museum’s major performance festival in Seoul and represent Denmark at the new Danish Pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale.

Denmark represented for the first time
In just a few years, the South Korean art scene has emerged as a booming cultural hub. Despite the country’s tumultuous history of war, segregation, and uprisings, explosive growth and strong support for cultural initiatives have helped South Korea establish a dynamic and influential art scene that has quickly gained international recognition.

Seoul in particular has become an international art hotspot in Asia, while the Gwangju Biennale, originally established with a political agenda to commemorate the Gwangju Massacre of 1980—one of the country’s most brutal massacres of its own people—has risen to prominence as Asia’s largest international contemporary art biennale.

Within the past ten years, the prestigious biennale has introduced national pavilions and exhibitions, much like those at Venice. This year, for the first time, Denmark is represented with the exhibition Showcase, curated by Artistic Director of AHC Jacob Fabricius and freelance curator Maria Kjær Themsen.

Showcase features four Danish artists—Esben Weile Kjær, Miriam Kongstad, Eliyah Mesayer, and Filip Vest—each presenting a selected work that explores the intersection of performance, video, and sculpture. These works are all linked to a larger performative piece presented at Seoul’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in the days leading up to the biennale.

Children’s play and collapse
Before Showcase opens, the artists will participate in the ambitious performance festival at MMCA. Here, a large international audience will have the opportunity to experience four compelling performance works that reflect in various ways on our global performance-driven society.

Each artist has a unique approach to performance as a central and vital element of their artistic practice. Whether engaging their own bodies or directing others, their works grapple with important issues including identity, queerness, care, sexuality, community, pain, freedom, and capitalism in the 21st century.

Esben Weile Kjær, renowned in Denmark for his ecstatic performances exploring the party as a phenomenon, will present a new version of his ballet work COLLIDER!, which deals with exhaustion, effort, and the moment just before the body collapses. Miriam Kongstad will debut her new work HARD PLAY, a choreographic performance examining children’s play and its role in our conditioning to perform (gender) identities and social norms from an early age.

Filip Vest will present their new work Self Tape, featuring an androgynous figure—part monster, part pop princess—who struggles breathlessly to find a role to play in late capitalist society. Eliyah Mesayer likewise creates an imaginary space, performing as an oracle the audience can interact with through questions, dream narratives, or simply by being present.

In the spotlight
The performance festival at MMCA and the Gwangju Biennale coincide with Korean Art Week in Seoul, as well as the city’s two major art fairs, Frieze and KIAF. The four Danish artists will thereby be showcased at a significant moment on a prominent stage that draws the attention of international art institutions, curators, gallerists, and audiences alike.

Jacob Fabricius, Artistic Director at AHC, who has curated the South Korean pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, has many years of experience with the Asian—and specifically the Korean—art scene. He notes:

“This marks a unique opportunity for the artists to be showcased in South Korea. We hope the initiative will contribute further to the ongoing rich cultural exchange between South Korea and Denmark, opening up new opportunities for the artists and Danish art in terms of experimentation and collaboration. That’s what AHC works for every day.”

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The promotion project in Korea is generously supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, The Agency of Culture and Palaces in Denmark and the Embassy of Denmark in Seoul, Korea.