Under this mask, another mask. I will never be finished removing all these faces.
(Claude Cahun)
This quote might sound like the essence of the eternal odyssey of the self, a trip into the unknown. The self, the battlefield of existence, has its modes, methods and attires to support one’s journey towards the ultimate finale.
The constant questioning of one’s identity within all possible identities might only be possible by means of self–invention: as if the act, the art, the need for transformation is that one key to each door of perception.
On this journey, no form is acceptable; it might appeal as a sublime acrobatic void, but also as a guideline into the next daring adventure of being.
As Hölderlin declares: “In a state of being and non-being, the possible becomes everywhere real, the real becomes ideal, and this, in art’s free imitations, is a dream, at once terrifying and divine.”
The ideal survival kit might consist of the ability to evolve within all possible identities, to not be erased by them. Each of those transformations corresponds to an outer or inner state of emergency. They are gestures of the unspoken that consider the longing need to bid farewell and be replaced by whatever comes next.
Perpetual change seems to govern the rules of existence. It provokes a so-called reality-check, simply because if one questions the self, why not question everything else, as if out of a primal urge. And at this point we enter such an acrobatic void, which gives us the absolute freedom of the self through endless transition.
Amel Bourouina proposed designer Mads Dinesen to invite a constellation of artists whose work centres around the theme of identity shift. The exhibition combines personal work of every artist as well as a selection of work from their past collaborations.
Dinesen collaborated with photographer Mali Lazell on a series of portraits that reflect on the way we perceive others and how we want to be perceived, disturbing images, which create a feeling of distortion within their beauty. He assisted interdisciplinary artist-performer Andrea Splisgar during some of her recent stagings and videos about the physical and psychological states of emergency, her intense battle between role and ritual and the celebrational aspect of questioning any form and status.
The three of them united their interest behind the masked identity to create “Phenomena”, the story of a poet who needs to die in order to be reborn. Frauke Schmidt who created the most of Dinesen’s soundtracks to his shows and installations and painter-sculptor Björn Streeck, whose graphical body signatures seem to remind us of the lack of information that our body leaves while we construct its absence in search of origins, have been an inspirational Manifesto to Dinesen’s own research. Dinesen himself declares the fascination with infinite identities as the core essence of being, not solely of his collections.
The exhibition will pair the radical physical presence/absence of these five artists by complementing as well as contrasting their visual appearance. Nevertheless one may confront all transformational images with a perception that each and every one of these times frames are based on that one eternal question:
If Love, Death and (black) Humour are the greater mysteries of life... may we suggest to add Identity to the group of the unknown inspirational personae”
