person // Marie Thams
MARCH 31st 2023 - MAY 6h 2023
Solo exhibition by Marie Thams. Curated by Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller
Opening March 31st at 4-6 PM
It is with great pleasure that Kunsthal Nord presents the solo exhibition Person by visual artist Marie Thams. Through film, sculpture, sound and object, Thams examines the relationship between language use and the way in which gender and identity are perceived in the present, with a particular focus on how language and gendered role designations play a role in the distribution of power in society.
Horizon and imagination
The film work Person forms the focal point of the exhibition. In the work, Thams examines the term "foreperson" versus "chairman" and addresses how the gendered word fits into a linguistic tradition that helps to maintain limiting ideas about gender and role distribution.
In the film's soundtrack, Thams' own voice is heard in two overlapping tracks. In one, we are informed about important events in the history of equality - ranging from the execution of the French women's rights champion, Olympe de Gouges in 1793 - to Aarhus City Council's recognition of the titles "foreperson" and "forewoman" in 2018. In the second soundtrack, Thams investigates with more playful voice selected words and phrases that connect the historical impacts to a larger abstract reflection on linguistic meanings and structures that help to shape our imagination and horizon as well as the question of inclusion in society-supporting spaces.
The work's central message – that it is possible to liberate the sexes through a neutral language – is put into greater perspective through the third soundtrack and the work's image page. Here you see and hear playful children drawing new horizon lines, while formal meeting choreographies unfold, are outlined and opened. A hand is extended across generations, who all have the right to define their own discretion and the opportunity to shape the language of the future.
Call to action and outlook
In room 2, a large megaphone-like sculpture in three parts hangs from the ceiling. The work's visual references and its title, Hør (do you dream?), bring to mind speech, exclamation and listening, but also a dreamy state. If you stand under the sculpture, it simulates a telescope - here you can look up and out through the window to look at the concrete, as well as the symbolic horizon, with an openness and vastness far beyond the walls of the art gallery.
Consistent with Thams' work – and for the exhibition – is that objects and materials as well as words and linguistic meanings are broken up and dissected to be reassembled in new meanings. This creates room for nuances and new understandings of the already existing – a simple artistic touch that challenges the power of habit, and at the same time calls for real change.
The voice as material – speech, song and free vocal studies – as well as a field of interest is an important aspect of Thams' work – and the voice is also in focus in the short, independent sound work, U as a starting point, where energetic children's voices are heard repeating a phrase about and over again.
The importance of the reference
In room 3 you will find, among other things, more in-depth information about Olympe, Nielsine, the historic oak trees and the report from the World Economic Forum, which is specifically mentioned in the film work Person. In addition, several threads and voices flow through the space of references which are linked to the work and the exhibition. Precisely pluralism in the question of an inclusive language is crucial – also for the traveling project person – in motion, where 15 authors, researchers and business people contribute across disciplines.
From gendered body to person
Considered as a whole, the exhibition starts an important conversation about the invisible gendered structures that exist in our language and that affect the way we meet people. The exhibition does not try to teach, but investigates why there is a problem in which it consists, as well as what is needed to update today's linguistic habits. With the linguistic update from "chairman" to "foreperson", Thams encourages people to become self-aware by being aware of the limiting categorizations and structures that exist in the Danish language and, in the same vein, to ask themselves how we can together promote development to ensure inclusion.
Performative conversation on April 15th in Kunsthal Nord
On April 15th at 2 - 4 PM a performative conversation will be held in Kunsthal Nord with Drude Dahlerup, Ida Marie Hede, Cecilie Nørgaard and Marie Thams, moderated by Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller. Here, these tone-setting authors and cultural actors will each give a speech based on their own professional and lived experiences, and involve us in the relationship between gender and power in the Danish language and society. Welcome!
person – in motion
The exhibition takes place as part of the traveling project person – in motion, which was initiated and developed by Marie Thams and Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller. The project consists of a series of interventions, an art film and a publication, which together call for the liberation of gender and the distribution of power in the Danish language and society. Through the project, a movement is created across the country, where art institutions and their local audience are invited into a processing of the power of language and thus also the role of art in the development of our common culture and point of view.
The traveling project runs through the questions – who completes and develops our joint community-supporting institutions? How are we shaped by language – and can we liberate the distribution of social roles and power structures by expanding the notion of citizenship through language? Who does the term “we” cover? Through the exhibition and multi-voiced conversations, the aim is to contribute to an increased nuance of prevailing structures and notions about the body, equality and fellow human beings, and that diversity and inclusion is ensured in all gatherings.
The contributing authors create an important cross-section between the literary and the artistic as well as current research and business life - and are all invited to write a speech on the subject based on their own professional and lived experience:
Ingrid Baraka and Naima Yasin, who are behind the podcast A Seat At The Table - Drude Dahlerup, women's and gender researcher, author and professor emerita - Caspar Eric, poet - Ida Marie Hede, author - Shëkufe Tadayoni Heiberg, author, literary agent, publisher and translator – Merete Pryds Helle, author – Liv Helm, theater director and artistic director of Husets Teater – Nazila Kivi, critic, literary reviewer, external lecturer in gender studies and co-founder of the magazine Friktion – Moussa Mchangama, co-founder of consultancy and the research platform In Futurum and former spokesperson in Mino Denmark – Ehm Eg Miltersen, linguist, author and debater – Cecilie Nørgaard, educational and gender sociologist and author and owner of Mangfold – Natalia Rogaczewska, director of the Women's Economy and founder and director of the consulting company Værdbar – Elias Sadaq, author and playwright – Marie Thams, visual artist.
The interventions, which unfold at Rønnebæksholm in Næstved, Copenhagen Contemporary, Kunsthal Nord in Aalborg and at Kunsthal Aarhus between October 2022 and June 2023, take shape through the film work person and performative conversations with the project's participating authors. Especially in Kunsthal Nord, the film work is shown as a solo exhibition with related works.
Together with Gads Forlag, work is being done to collect the speeches in an anthology in continuation of the project.
The overall project is supported by Statens Kunstfond, Beckett-Fonden, Knud Højgaards Fond, Copenhagen Contemporary and Næstved Municipality. The exhibition is also supported by Aalborg Municipality's Fine Art Fund.
A special thank you to Karen Elsebeth Jensen, exhibition manager at Vandrehallen Kunsthal, where the works were exhibited in 2022.
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Marie Thams is a visual artist with training from the Royal Academy. Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2011) and Goldsmiths, London (2009). Thams' work responds to current political and cultural structures and values, and unfolds in sound, textile and video installations, film, performance, sculpture and text. She has exhibited in several places nationally and internationally, i.a. at the Kunsten Museum of Art Aalborg, the Statens Museum for Art, the Free Exhibition Building, Vandrehallen Kunsthal, URBANEK (London), Milestone Institute (Budapest), ARKEN Museum for Modern Art and Heartland Festival. In January 2022, Thams joined there as front person in the Association of Visual Artists.
Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller is a freelance curator affiliated with the SixtyEight Art Institute in Copenhagen. She has an MA in Visual Culture from the University of Copenhagen (2013) and in Curating from Aarhus University (2020). Anker-Møller's practice focuses on neomaterialism, social structures, gender and performativity through exhibition production, film documentation and research. She has several years of experience as a curator and has, among other things, co-run the exhibition venue RØM as well as curated and produced exhibitions and events at Holstebro Art Museum, Kunsthal Aarhus, Rønnebæksholm, Copenhagen Contemporary, VEGA and Thorvaldsens Museum.
Drude Dahlerup is professor emerita at Stockholm University and Roskilde University and has written numerous books and articles on the subject of 'Gender and Politics'. Dahlerup works around the world for e.g. The UN and the Inter-Parliamentary Union as an international advisor in 'empowerment of women' in politics, i.a. using new electoral systems and quota rules. In the 1970s, she helped to initiate women's research and later gender research both in Denmark, the Nordic countries and internationally. Dahlerup was active in the Red Stocking Movement in the 1970s and in the 1990s she was a co-founder of the EU-critical 'June Movement'.
Ida Marie Hede is the author of seven books, a number of dramatic works, and has collaborated with several visual artists and musicians. She has a master's degree. in art history from the University of Copenhagen and Goldsmiths College and graduated from the Writers' School in Copenhagen in 2008. Hede has taught 'writing and art' at, among others, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, the Playwriting Program and the School of Architecture. She has received the Norwegian Arts Council's three-year work grant; her books have been translated into i.a. German, English and Swedish, and her latest novel 'Suget' was nominated in 2021 for the Montana Prize and Politiken's Literature Prize.
Cecilie Nørgaard is an education and gender sociologist, author and owner of the company Mangfold, which since 2008 has worked to activate gender research in practice, especially in the field of education. Here, Nørgaard has, among other things, developed the continuing education on gender, diversity and norm-critical practice, the Prisme certificate. Nørgaard works creatively with dissemination as both a consultant, lecturer and author - most recently with the publication Han Hun hen - education for equality and diversity (Gyldendal, 2021) - as well as through the word app Ordet er dit, which in an easy and fun way can teach those interested to contribute to creating less discrimination and more equality through language (App Store, 2022).
The project is supported by Statens Kunstfond, Beckett-Fonden, Knud Højgaards Fond, Næstved Municipality and Copenhagen Contemporary. The exhibition is supported by Aalborg Municipality's Fine Art Fund.