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7/1/2010

Tupilakosaurus

Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art and The National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen

Curated by Kuratorisk Aktion (Frederikke Hansen & Tone Olaf Nielsen) in collaboration with the Pia Arke Society

With the premature death of Greenlandic-Danish artist Pia Arke (1958-2007), the Nordic region lost one of its few, perhaps primary, postcolonial practitioners. For more than two decades, Arke developed an innovative form of artistic research, with which she examined the Danish-Greenlandic colonial history that she as the daughter of a Greenlandic mother and a Danish father herself was a product of. The Nordic region did not seem ready to confront this history in Arke’s lifetime, for which reason her work did not receive the broad recognition and dissemination it deserves. With the exhibition TUPILAKOSAURUS: Pia Arke’s Issue with Art, Ethnicity, and Colonialism, 1981-2006, the Danish curators’ collective Kuratorisk Aktion seeks to remedy this.

Scrutinizing those who scrutinize Greenland
Arke engaged the Danish-Greenlandic colonial history in a number of ways. In some works she examined Western conceptions of Greenland, thereby scrutinizing those who scrutinize Greenland. In other works she returned to the places in Greenland, where she as a child had lived, and recovered some of the many stories and destinies that have been left out of official history books. And in others still she settled accounts with European preconceptions of so-called primitive art and Eskimoic originality. While public archives and private keepsakes formed the primary sources of Arke’s research, photography and text made up her main media due to the central role played by both in colonial processes. Mocking the movements of the explorer, the anthropologist, and the cartographer she followed unacknowledged traces and forgotten poles of belonging. In retrospect, Arke’s artistic production unfolds as a persistent examination of the driving forces behind Denmark’s colonization of Greenland and its contemporary repression and repercussions in both countries.

An alternative retrospective in two venues
The first comprehensive survey of Arke’s work, TUPILAKOSAURUS features more than 70 photographs, paintings, videos, installations, and social projects alongside material from Arke’s extensive archive. In line with her showdowns with art, ethnicity, and colonialism, the works are presented in the institutions of the two disciplines she examined: hence, the greater part of her works are displayed in Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, while a smaller selection of works are curated into the permanent collections of Inuit and Greenlandic cultural artifacts in the National Museum of Denmark. Following its debut in Copenhagen, the exhibition will travel to Katuaq and Greenland’s National Museum & Archives in Nuuk (March 5 – April 4, 2010) and to BildMuseet in Umeå, Sweden (June 6 – September 26, 2010).

Nine theme sections
Arke’s works are curated into nine theme sections with headings derived from her own production, such as Arctic Hysteria, Ethno-Aesthetics, and Fishing out skulls and bones. With the sections, Kuratorisk Aktion hopes to disseminate Arke’s work in a manner that simultaneously circumscribes her artistic project and keeps her methodology and field of investigation open for others to pick up the threads. One of the theme sections consists of the film program The Eccentric Eskimo curated by the Society for Ethnographic Film Blunders, a society Arke co-founded in 2000 with Erik Gant and Anders Jørgensen.

Pia Arke’s books republished in trilingual editions
As an essential part of the exhibition, both Arke’s Danish-language books, Ethno-Aesthetics (1995) and Stories from Scoresbysund (2003), are being republished in new trilingual editions (English, Greenlandic and Danish), whereby they have become accessible once more for a Danish readership and for the first time for a Greenlandic and international public.

Financial support
The exhibition is realized with financial support from The Augustinus Foundation, BildMuseet, Jarl Borgen, Borgen Publishers, City of Copenhagen’s Council for Visual Arts, The Danish Arts Council Committee for Literature, The Danish Arts Council Committee for Visual Arts, The Danish Council for Independent Research / Humanities, Dansk Veteranbil Udlejning, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Det Kongelige Grønlandsfond, Government of Greenland’s Cultural Grant, Greenland National Museum & Archives, Knud Højgaards Fond, Katuaq, Kulturfonden Danmark-Grønland, The National Museum of Denmark, Nordic Culture Point, The New Carlsberg Foundation, The Novo Nordisk Foundation, Sonning-Fonden, and Svensk-danska kulturfonden.

Exhibition events
The exhibition is accompanied by a number of events. On January 23, from 2-5 pm, the Society for Ethnographic Film Blunders will screen and discuss Leo Hansen’s 1927 film With Dog Sledge Through Alaska in The National Museum of Denmark (free admission). On February 6 – 7, from 12-5 pm, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art hosts the international seminar An Archive of Affected Anthropology: Locating the Arke-Typical in the Aesthetic Research of Pia Arke, 1981-2006, which brings together nine regional and international artists and theorists in order to analyze Arke’s innovative contribution to artistic research, visual thinking, and postcolonial studies and to examine why she nonetheless remained relatively marginalized in the Danish and international art worlds (advance registration no later than February 5 at kl@denfrie.dk, admission: DKK 45 (adults), DKK 25 (students/pensioners)).

On March 7, from 12-4 pm, Katuaq in Nuuk will host the meeting “Following in Pia Arke’s Footsteps? A Community Meeting about Contemporary Art's Contribution to the New Greenland”, which sets forth to discuss the ways in which contemporary art, and Pia Arke’s works in particular, matter in the context of postcolonial Greenland (free admission). Finally, on March 10, from 6:30-9:30 pm, Kuratorisk Aktion will screen and discuss Leo Hansen’s 1927 film With Dog Sledge Through Alaska in Greenland National Museum & Archives (free admission).

For more information about the exhibitions or events please contact
Exhibition and Press coordinator
Kit Leunbach E: kl@denfrie.dk T: + 45 33 339503

Information
On the exhibition in general:
Kuratorisk Auktion, info@kuratorisk-aktion.org, +45 20 93 50 86

On the exhibition at the National Museum of Denmark:
PR & Marketing Coordinator Jesper Thomas Møller, jtm@natmus.dk, +45 33 47 30 06.

Opening January 8, 5pm - 8pm

Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art
Oslo Plads 1 DK - 2100 Copenhagen
http://www.denfrie.dk E: info@denfrie.dk T: +45 33 12 28 03
Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday 10-17
Thursday 10-21

The National Museum of Denmark
Ny Vestergade 10, København
http://www.natmus.dk E: nationalmuseet@natmus.dk T: +45 33 13 44 11
Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm. Mondays closed

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