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Fire & Ice: On Belonging and Becoming in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)
Eight contemporary artists connected to Greenland, including Jessie Kleemann and Inuk Silis Høegh, explore identity, heritage and belonging in new commissions and established works.
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In a white, brightly lit room, 43,000 red beads run like blood out of a red box. Lisbeth Karline Poulsen made one bead for each child estimated never to have been born because of the Danish state's IUD campaign in Greenland.
Eight artists connected to Kalaallit Nunaat fill CC's shipyard halls, many with new works made at XL scale. You pass a cooler full of Faxe Kondi bottles, then Emilia Sølvsten's town of Maniitsoq, Sukkertoppen in Danish, built from several thousand sugar loaves. Kunstkritikk found the show coherent despite a loose concept, but questioned the staging: Martin Brandt Hansen's mitaarneq figures stand in huge vitrines the wall texts never mention.
The same critic called Jessie Kleemann's kayak video her best work outside live performance and "worth the whole exhibition". Entry is the CC ticket, 140 DKK at the desk, no booking needed, and Thursdays run to 21:00. CC is closed on 31 December, the show's last date, so 30 December is the final chance.
Editor's pick
43,000 beads run like blood out of a red box, one for each birth Denmark's IUD campaign in Greenland is estimated to have prevented. Eight artists fill CC's shipyard halls; Kunstkritikk called Jessie Kleemann's kayak film "worth the whole exhibition".
Look for
Jessie Kleemann's kayak film
On a large screen, Kleemann drags a limp fabric kayak across a white sand beach while her voice retells a Greenlandic kayak myth over electronic sound.
The Unborn, by Lisbeth Karline Poulsen
Look for 43,000 red beads, one for every child never born after the IUD campaign, running like blood from a red box in a bare white room.
The mitaarneq vitrines
In the last room, life-size figures in giant glass cases wear sealskin trousers and kamik boots alongside wrestling masks and clown wigs, after Greenland's mitaarneq dress-up tradition.
Maniitsoq in sugar
Emilia Sølvsten rebuilds the West Greenland town the Danes called Sukkertoppen as a landscape of several thousand moulded sugar loaves.
Inuk Silis Høegh's green film
A slow camera moves over Greenland's water and mountains with the whole landscape tinted a dark green, which one reviewer read as radioactivity and mining.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
With kids
Ages 3-17 pay 25 DKK, under-3s are free, and under-12s must come with an adult. Some works deal with forced contraception and colonial loss.
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Image credits
6
- Fire & Ice: On Belonging and Becoming in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)Photo: David Stjernholm / Copenhagen Contemporary
- Henrik Vibskov: The ExhibitionPhoto: Josefina Eikenaar / Designmuseum Danmark
- The Garbage Man – Thomas DamboPhoto: Anders Sune Berg / ARKEN
- Gauguin & Kihara – First ImpressionsCourtesy of Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
- Copenhagen ContemporaryOrf3us / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Designmuseum DanmarkJasparbang / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0