Padiglione Danimarca

Danish Pavilion57th 

International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia May 13 – November 16, 2017 

Kirstine Roepstorff Influenza: theatre of glowing darkness.

 Developed by visual artist Kirstine Roepstorff, the exhibition project influenza challenges us to embrace darkness as a positive force of healing, transformation, and empowerment. To give birth to our future. 

If the entirety of necessary information pre-exists within all forms, the only action that’s required to effect change is to dissolve prevailing beliefs – to enter the rumbling, alive unknown. One must be willing to completely abolish old systems to advance towards new ways of thinking, understanding and being. 

Darkness dissolves form and can be seen as the pregnant void out of which all things arise. The exhibition will explore the metamorphosis that occurs between the destruction of the known and the embrace of the new. Darkness. At the beginning of all creation. When everything was just floating energy in complete darkness… 

Maybe you remember, which choices you made here? And what you chose to rehearse and to learn in this life? How much did you dare to risk in order to grow? 

How much darkness did you absorb? Do you remember? influenza consists of an immersive theatre and a structural intervention in the pavilion and surrounding gardens. “theatre of glowing darkness” is a dynamic large-scale installation that uses darkness, light projections, glass and a dialogue between three protagonists. Using the pavilion itself as a sculptural form, the artist has created an architectural re-structuring project altering preestablished borders to mediate with her surrounding landscape intervention. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a booklet with contributions by Angela Rosenberg, Sepake Angiama, Solvej Helweg Ovesen and Ute Meta Bauer. The four contributors form the Consortium for the exhibition project, and have acted as a ‘sounding board’ for the artist through every stage of the project’s development. 

Biography and selected exhibitions Born in 1972, Kirstine Roepstorff lives and works in Fredericia, Denmark. She graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Roepstorff’s artistic practice consists primarily of mixed media collages pointing out existing power relations, and critically investigating the history and failures of political ideas. By editing and decomposing original materials, her work generates new contexts that open up spaces for negotiation and new narratives. 

Roepstorff’s practice is situated in those “in-between” spaces of negotiation. 

Selected exhibitions: Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen, DK (2016); Den Frie, Copenhagen, DK (2015); Kunstverein Göttingen, DE (2014); Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Kunstmuseum Basel, CH (2010); The National Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, NO (2010). 

In recent years, Kirstine Roepstorff has created several large-scale public art projects, including "The Gong" for Dokk1 in Aarhus, DK (2015) and "Klangfrø" for the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, DK (2014). 

Her work is included in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, NO; National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, DK among others. 

The Danish Arts Foundation and La Biennale di Venezia The Danish Arts Foundation Committee for Visual Arts Project Funding is the Commissioner of the Danish pavilion and has appointed the artist Kirstine Roepstorff to represent Denmark at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. 

The Committee consists of Gitte Ørskou (chair), Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, Bodil Nielsen and Jacob Tækker. With the generous additional support of: New Carlsberg Foundation for the “theatre of glowing darkness”. Kvadrat collaborated on the tapestry and supported the textiles.