Exhibitions
Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC) works to offer up-coming artists and curators support to develop their practice, among other things by facilitating exhibition possibilities both nationally and internationally.
Eliyah Mesayer: Ask The Oracle, 2023, Roskilde Festival, DK. Photo: Julie Rajchman.
AHC : Exhibitions : MMCA Performing Arts & Gwangju Biennale : Showcase : 04.09.24-01.12.24
4 – 5 September 2024
MMCA Performing Arts 2024
30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno District, Seoul, Sydkorea
7 September — 1 December 2024
15th Gwangju Biennale
SEEUM, 26-12 Seoseopyeong-gil, Nam-gu, Gwangju
In late August 2024, Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC) sent Esben Weile Kjær, Miriam Kongstad, Eliyah Mesayer and Filip Vest off to South Korea, where they presented performance works at the national museum’s major performance festival in Seoul and represent Denmark at the new Danish Pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale.
The artists selected share a strong interest in performance and use it regularly as a manifold tool and vital element in their general practice. Each artist has a unique approach to performance, and whether engaging their own bodies or instructing others, their works grapple with important issues including identity, spirituality, queerness, care, sexuality, community, pain, freedom, capitalism, and desires in the 21st century.
During two-day live-act presentations at MMCA Performing Arts in Seoul, the artists present mostly new, or updated versions of older performances. Esben Weile Kjær, renowned in Denmark for his ecstatic performances exploring the party as a phenomenon, presents a new version of his ballet work COLLIDER!, which deals with exhaustion, effort, and the moment just before the body collapses. Miriam Kongstad debuts 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 with her performance Ask The Oracle, performing as an oracle the audience can interact with through questions, dream narratives, or simply by being present.
The selected works at the exhibition Showcase in the Danish pavilion are all closely linked to the performances that the artists presented at MMCA in Seoul. Here, they explore the intersection between performance, video and sculpture. The works are all new sculptural works commissioned by Art Hub Copenhagen and curated by AHC’s artistic director, Jacob Fabricius and freelance curator Maria Kjær Themsen.
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Esben Weile Kjær (DK, 1992) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, in 2022. He also has a background as a DJ and a degree in Music Management from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC). In his performances, installations and sculptures, he examines identity among his own generation and explores the role of popular culture and technology in determining our experience of community and freedom.
Miriam Kongstad (DK, 1991) is a visual artist and choreographer based in Berlin (DE) and Copenhagen (DK). Materialized as images, performance, sculpture, text, and sound, Kongstad’s practice is anchored in explorations of embodiment, identity, and social codes. By articulating often ambivalent and complex aspects of life, such as health, sexuality, pain, and desire, the human body is explored as a metaphysical, organic, social, and spiritual entity – an expanded experience of being flesh.
Filip Vest (DK. 1995) holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy. Through performances, installations, films, and texts, they examine queer love, loneliness, and desire in the 21st century. Applying rehearsal methods from theatre, they test the relationship between the script and the body to investigate the different ways we perform our identities and relations. Vest’s universe is inhabited by a vast network of things of different scales, each affecting the other: climate change and crumbling relationships, role play, doomsday karaoke and re-enacted kisses, a bird falling in love with a statue, and a frog having a breakdown in the middle of a striptease. Through mobile phones, walls and windows, the characters communicate and miscommunicate across species and time while attempting to make themselves legible to each other.
Eliyah Mesayer (DK, 1987) graduated from the Jutland Art Academy, Denmark, in 2020. She is based in Copenhagen. Eliyah Mesayer’s practice is primarily expressed through an alchemical tradition. Her form of alchemy isn’t limited to alchemical works on paper, but also extends into poetry, installation, and performative works. Mesayer’s fictional state Illiyeen, a state for the stateless, which both engages her own heritage, but also seeks a form of alchemical change by artistically balancing itself on the dynamic threshold between reality and fiction.
Past exhibitions
3 November 2023 – 7 January 2024
Viborg Kunsthal
Trappegalleriet
Riddergade 8, 8800 Viborg
In the site-specific exhibition All that Remains, visual artist Banaan Al-Nasser presents a compilation of works in various media from the last 5 years.
The exhibition is a visual investigation of how identity and home are mutually connected. It springs from the ruins of the public housing construction in the Vollsmose district, where, among other things, archive images and miniature everyday items are put together with the rubble from the demolition of the then ‘ghetto area’. With her works, Al-Nasser creates a new world and forces us to confront concepts of home, culture, existence, and belonging.
All that Remains is an artistic viewpoint that shows the existing contradictions in the creation of clichés and stereotypes. The artist encourages cultural encounters that can enhance our awareness of how we perceive each other as humans.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Banaan Al-Nasser (b. 1982) is a Danish/Jordanian/Palestinian mixed-media visual artist who lives and works in Copenhagen. She has an MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2018) and has exhibited at ARoS, Fatamorgana, and Betty Nansen Theater, among others.
Banaan Al-Nasser works with themes of identity and culture, and her works often have a clear social, poetic, and political character. Her lived experience has nourished her to juxtapose and examine spirituality, creativity, and human values in the Middle East as well as the West. The works often take the form of everyday objects charged with symbolic value that cross and challenge national boundaries, class divides, and cultural narratives.
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The exhibition All that Remains with Banaan Al-Nasser is the third exhibition in the newly established collaboration between the three institutions Viborg Kunsthal, Viborg Animation Festival, and Art Hub Copenhagen. The project has been initiated from a common desire to create visibility and expand the knowledge of current visual artists to new target groups across the country.
24 August – 22 October 2023
Viborg Kunsthal
Trappegalleriet
Riddergade 8, 8800 Viborg
The exhibition The Mullah Redux is a narrative set in the near future about the development of a streetwise, literate street boy. The story follows him from childhood, tossed around between the faithful, gangs, and devilish forces. Later, he becomes a possessed mullah and the leader of a small army, which is defeated by a military superpower. The Mullah Redux is about tensions between the East and the West, but the exhibition also deals with the East’s dreams about the West and the West’s dreams about the East.
The Mullah Redux unfolds in a landscape plagued by war and conflict. However, the story is also a love story similar to Romeo and Juliet, where the feuding of their families prevents the union of the two lovers. The exhibition presents two different cultures battling each other, while their warriors are drawn to each other. An impossible love between an anthropomorphic Reaper Drone and a righteous mullah.
The exhibition is the second part of an ongoing collaboration between the two Danish visual artists Masar Sohail and Halfdan Pisket, who have Iraqi and Turkish roots, respectively. The first part was shown at Tranen from October 2022 to March 2023.
So far, Sohail has primarily worked as a filmmaker and painter, while Pisket is known as a comic creator and VJ. The Mullah Redux establishes a universe at the intersection of their respective artistic practices.
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The exhibition is part of an ongoing collaboration between Viborg Kunsthal, Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC), and Viborg Animation Festival.
In connection with the exhibition, Viborg Kunsthal, in collaboration with Art Hub Copenhagen, invites to a Free Lunch on Tuesday, September 27 at 12.00. Here, one can meet Masar Sohail and Halfdan Pisket in a conversation about the exhibition.
The above text about the exhibition is an excerpt from a longer text written by Toke Lykkeberg, head of Tranen.
1 June 2023 – 06 August 2023
Viborg Kunsthal
Trappegalleriet
Riddergade 8, 8800 Viborg
Beginning in June 2023 the three institutions Viborg Kunsthal, Viborg Animation Festival and Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC) will enter into a brand new collaboration on three exhibitions, a workshop and three Free Lunch-events.
The first exhibition in the series will be Friezes and Borders by Javier Tapia, currently in residency at AHC.
The site-specific exhibition Friezes and Borders in the Staircase Gallery features two large collages by the Danish-Chilean artist Javier Tapia.
The title is a reference both to the classical friezes and the contemporary allusions to the presence of mental, physical and historical borders in the works.
The fundamental theme of the works is the representation of the colonised subject. The collages juxtapose images from classical friezes featuring strong references to 15th- and 19th-century landscape painting with images representing parallel stories from parts of the world other than Europe, thereby expanding the representation of subjects.
Tapia’s works create an enhanced representation of the colonised body, thereby generating new references to the idea of ‘the other’ and challenging the more linear European conception of people, art and history. The confrontation between old and new and different ways of representing the world and the subject create a hybrid idea of the landscape that reflects contemporary art discourse, thereby helping create a new kind of representation.
13 – 30 March 2023
AHC
Halmtorvet 27, 1700 København V
The exhibition could be seen from the windows of AHC.
The Ghanaian artist Abdul-Salam Alhassan took part in Art Hub Copenhagens new residency-exchange programme called Wintanworks – a collaboration with blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Ghana.
As part of his residency, he was showing selected works in the windows of AHC. The works are part of two series titled Revelation and Route.
View images from the exhibition here.
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Alhassan seeks to understand the languages of painting and sculpture by way of experimenting with a variety of materials including, but not limited to plastic mats. He collects these materials which are embedded with histories of spirituality, knowledge, and leisure from mosques, schools, and various homes across the country. Merging a background in painting and a keen interest in the materiality of these mats, their colours, textures, and the space they occupy, as well as a delight in layering, Alhassan employs burning as a technique to create abstract paintings, objects and sculptures. Burning is one of many methods in which these materials are discarded after having reached their end-of-life phase By his praxis, Alhassan revives the material into new life using the very methods that would otherwise have concluded their demise. His works explore the potentialities that lie within “ruined” materials and how destruction may yet give birth to new narratives.
6 – 28 February 2023
AHC
Halmtorvet 27, 1700 København V
The exhibition could be seen from the windows of AHC.
As part of their residency in the fall of 2022, the residents Vala T. Foltyn, Margarita del Carmen, and (Co)Opulence all chose to present their practice and process through live performances.
The three performances were all filmed, and from February 6 to 28, 2023, it was possible to see them in their full length on screens in AHC’s windows at Halmtorvet 27, 1700 Copenhagen V.
It is still possible to view edited excerpts of the three performances on AHC’s media platform.
14. oktober – 6. november 2022
VEGA LAB and Little VEGA
Enghavevej 40, 1674 København
I samarbejde med VEGA|ARTS indtog AHC spillestedet VEGA med værker, talks og et performance-program.
VEGA|ARTS is a visionary space for contemporary art in VEGA’s exploration of new live formats, and how VEGA can become a house for multiple art forms. It’s an attempt to keep up with art and artists worldwide and at home, who are testing the categories at full throttle. Albums and live experiences are undergoing radical upheavals, which will test the limits for art, music, concert, audience, and venue.
In other words, VEGA|ARTS is established to develop and house new artistic methods, experiences, and understandings of the live experience and its bodily and collective dimensions in our culture. Now the door is kicked open to a new project phase, where the goal is to change VEGA forever.
COLLABORATIONS ARE ESSENTIAL
A central element in VEGA’s transformation is the realization that as an institution, they do not possess all the answers or methods. Therefore, VEGA|ARTS will also be full of collaborations, take-overs, and curatorial interventions from institutions, magazines, tech actors, collectives, artists, and curators working with the interdisciplinary, the process-oriented, the intersectional, and the virtual. This will hopefully result in some really wild and exciting live experiences.
AHC TAKE-OVER
The first institutional and artistic collaboration VEGA|ARTS entered into was with AHC. From October 14 to November 6, 2022, together with 19 artists’ works, we occupied VEGA LAB and Lille Vega with exhibited works (three artists), a Free Lunch, and a bombardment of a performance program on the weekend of November 5-6, with performances by 16 artists.
May, June, August, September
2022
In the windows of Halmtorvet 27 and Høkerboderne, 1700 København V.
Curated by Arrange the Ants
The overarching theme of the exhibition series THE ONES WHO EXIST DESPITE OF OR BECAUSE OF OR INSTEAD OF OR AFTER THE FACT OF is cultural ecology, highlighting the symbiosis that links us together. “Cultural ecology” in the sense of a metaphor, as a living organism, a balanced environment in which the system is all about interaction and mutual impact. In such a community, the robust nature of certain elements cannot be isolated from the fragility of others.
In the course of four months (May, June, August and September), the artists Emilie Bausager (May), Javier Alvarez Sagredo (June), Banaan Al-Nasser (August) and Laurits Gulløv (September) will take over the windows of Art Hub Copenhagen and assume the role of co-creators of a cultural ecology that has the potential to frame a moment, preserve a fleeting present, encircle the past and imagine alternative futures in which sustainability is a persistent existence subject to change.
How can the interaction between social, cultural, and economic entities be sustainable? The philosopher Timothy Morton summed up ecological awareness as: “some kind of fusion between tenderness and sadness, joy, yearning, longing, horror, laughter, melancholy and weirdness.”
Eventually, art returns to the cycle that made it possible – a reminder that our lives are connected.
The exhibition is curated by Arrange the Ants.
Read more about the exhibition here.
Read about each exhibition here.
View images of The Archeological Sandwich.
View images of Only Shadows Can Judge Me.
Minimalism-Maximalism-Mechanissmmm Act 3, installation image (2022). Art Sonje Center, all rights reserved, Photo: Euirock Lee.
17. marts – 24. april 2022
Art Sonje Center
Seoul, Korea
Minimalism-Maximalism-Mechanissmmm Act 1–Act 4 examines how artists use materials to tell stories about their surroundings and daily life. The exhibition creates connections between the artworks and the observer and examines how the curator can affect the aforementioned relationship between work and audience. As a whole, the exhibition is presented as thematic of how the institution presents itself, the art and the observer, to give the audience the experience and knowledge of, how meaning and connections are created spatially.
Minimalism-Maximalism-Mechanissmmm is divided and conceptualized into four acts by director of Art Hub Copenhagen Jacob Fabricius.
Act 3 features works by former residents at Art Hub Adam Khalil (as part of New Red Order) and Kasper Hesselbjerg as well as works by Cha Sla, SUPERFLEX and The Dumpling Club.
Act 4 is curated by Mikkel Elming, director at Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, and features works by Ali Kazim, Elsa Salonen, Lola Daels, Seulgi Lee, Studio ThinkingHand and Tove Storch.
Organized by Art Sonje Center and Kunsthal Aarhus.
Supported by Art Hub Copenhagen, Augustinus Fonden, Danish Arts Foundation, Embassy of Denmark in Korea and Knud Højgaards Fond.
Installation image from the exhibition 27DAGE (2022). “Jag snubblar på en jättestor tår” by Melannie Kitti. Curatered by SOL. Photo: Malle Madsen
1 February – 27 February 2022
The exhibition could be viewed from the windows.
Halmtorvet 27
1700 København V
27DAGE (27DAYS) was the title of an exhibition in Art Hub’s three studios, all the windows of which look out onto Halmtorvet at Vesterbro in Copenhagen. The exhibition was on show during February 2022.
Each studio was curated by an artist-run exhibition venue: SOL (Nexø), Bizarro (Copenhagen) and the nomadic art institution, f.eks. (Aalborg). Featuring site-specific installations and interventions, the exhibitions were run simultaneously, each in its own way activating the three spaces facing the street. The exhibitions could be seen from the street around the clock. Visitors could also see parts of the exhibitions indoors at selected times of the day.
Bizarro presented a work by the artist Mickael Marman, created specifically for the space. SOL invited the artist Melanie Kitti to exhibit in their space, while f.eks. transformed the space into an ad hoc ‘office space’, in which they conducted research, interviews and events for the duration of the exhibition. F.eks produces three texts during the exhibition, all of which will be made available at this page as “publishing moments”.
Mickael Marman on the work KMS/ACC/FRA/TXL/CPH.
More on Melanie Kittis work Jag snubblar på en jättestor tår.
The first “publishing moment” from f.eks.
The second “publishing moment” from f.eks.
In this exhibition, Art Hub set out to support Denmark’s numerous artist-run exhibition venues that continuously show exhibitions and organise events, frequently concentrating on younger Danish artists and their works.
These three particular exhibition venues were chosen to take part in 27DAGE, because together they represent both stationary exhibition spaces and more nomadic structures. They also come from different areas of Denmark. Art Hub aims constantly to invite artist-run venues to cooperate in different contexts, thereby supporting the many aspects and practices to be found both locally and nationally.
27DAGE marked the second occasion on which Art Hub invited young artists to exhibit in the area in and around Halmtorvet. The first was the exhibition This is a Meat City (2021), in which nine artists exhibited works in shops and restaurants throughout the meat-packing district of Vesterbro in Copenhagen.
Installationsbillede fra ”Everything is Simple and Beautiful, and You are My Friend (En udstilling for børn)”, kurateret af Institut Funder Bakke, Painter (1995) af Paul McCarthy (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk). Foto: David Stjernholm / @david_stjernholm
17 September – 31 Oktober 2021
tors-søn 13-18
Thoravej 29
2400 København NV
In 2023, Art Hub Copenhagen will move from its current premises at Halmtorvet in Copenhagen into a newly renovated building at Thoravej 29 in the northwest district of the capital. Before the renovation of the former factory building commenced, in collaboration with Bikubenfonden (the owner of the building), Art Hub gave five curators the opportunity to transform each floor into a temporary exhibition space, presenting works by one or more contemporary artists.
The title of the exhibition was straightforward: Thoravej 29. It featured five exhibitions curated by five curators, each of who was allocated one floor, free rein and a budget to create an exhibition of their own choosing. From the dark underground car park to the bright, open upper floor, works by a total of 23 artists in total revealed the diversity of the artists’ work and expression.
The exhibition was on show from 17 September until 31 October 2021.
Curators: Feminist Collective With No Name (FCNN), Institut Funder Bakke, Culture Art Society (CAS), Kristian Vistrup Madsen and Mette Woller.
Artists: Jeannette Ehlers, Santiago Mostyn, Nikhill Vettukattil, Jelsen Lee Innocent, Andromeda 8220 v. Aysha Amin, Tolia Astakhishvili, Bamses Billedbog, Karim Boumjimar, Lydia Östberg Diakité, D.N.A., Rochelle Goldberg, Liv Latricia Habel, Mia Edelgart / Sebastian Hedevang, Noah Umur Kanber, Paul McCarthy, Ruby Mariama Laura Andersen Ndoye, Vera Palme, Michala Paludan, Spaghetti Clurb og Young Boy Dancing Group.
Information folder from the exhibition.
As part of Thoravej 29, a performance by Young Boy Dancing Group could be experienced for one night in the exhibition ”Alien Water” curated by Mette Woller.
In collaboration with Bikubenfonden.
