Overgaden. Institue for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen

BETWEEN HERE & SOMEWHERE ELSE

13 November 2010 - 16 January 2011

An exhibition by Helen de Main & Maj Hasager

featuring James McLardy and Invitation to the Possible

The exhibition Between Here and Somewhere Else came out of a number of periods spent by Danish artist Maj Hasager (b. 1977) and British artist Helen de Main (b. 1980) in Palestine and Israel over the past three years. During their joint travels they developed an ongoing relationship with the area, and are attempting through this exhibition to illustrate the current situation in the occupied territories, as seen from the perspective of an outsider.

“In the beginning my visual outcome was much more a reaction to the current situation in the area – a way of understanding and processing the harsh reality of this place. Through ongoing research over several years and by living a daily life in Palestinian cities, I find myself making works, which are informed by long-term relationships, everyday life and a different way of coping with the situation” says Maj Hasager.

Recognising the importance of oral, written and visual narrative traditions in the construction of a shared history, Hasager and de Main portray alternative interpretations of a place which, despite its geographical distance, seems familiar to us, as a result of its permanent presence in the media.

In the work One Month in Ramallah – Al Quds/Guardian, de Main reproduces more than 60 photographs from British and Palestinian newspapers. The work is an attempt to reconcile her own experience of Palestine with the images of the place created by the media. Alongside these are geometric coloured prints that leave gaps in which the viewer can project their own image of the place.

All over the world, landscapes, buildings and cultural heritages are being altered, replaced or even eliminated as a result of war and conflict. Hasager's photographic and text-based work, Memories of Imagined Places, is the result of a long series of interviews with young Palestinians, in which she explores their inherited memories of the destroyed villages from which their grandparents fled in 1948. The work steps out of the frame of the conflict and introduces the viewer to personal narratives about landscapes of loss, longing and displacement.

Between Here and Somewhere Else also includes spatial sculptural installations, such as de Main's work Silwan Hoard – Abasi Family, in which de Main has recreated in bronze the rubble and fragments of cheap building materials from the destroyed home of the Abasi family in Jerusalem. The now valuable art objects are displayed on specially designed plinths that mimic the number and height of the family members. Through these objects, de Main aims to explore concepts of cultural status, value and ownership.

The exhibition is accompanied by an interview between the artists and Overgaden's Karen Mette Fog Pedersen that can be read here.

Between Here and Somewhere Else was exhibited in the spring of 2010 in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah.

At Overgaden the exhibition is accompanied by an archive, a contextualised programme and the intercultural seminar Invitation to the Possible.

For the archive, British artist James McLardy has created a new sculptural artwork that uses a playful interrogation of form, function and public space to make available a collection of archival material in the gallery that consists of books and journals relating to Palestinian culture, history and the political situation.

The objects within McLardy's installation borrow from an architectural language of water features, such as public fountains, hamams and water parks that he observed whilst on a research trip in Palestine earlier in the year. The participatory nature of the work, through its functional proportions and improvised sense of place, invites the gallery visitors to explore, sit and read within a sculptural environment, whilst questioning the role of social and leisure space and time, in an area that is so often defined by conflict.

Invitation to the Possible a multi-disciplinary and interactive series of discursive art events in response to the theme of interculturalism in Denmark. Over the course of its 4 week run, Invitation to the Possible has invited artists from the disciplines of music, literature, performing arts and visual arts to programme a series of events that will take place at Overgaden.

These events intend to generate awareness around the discourse of intercultural aesthetics as a new cultural category in the making in Denmark, and give the artists involved a dialogical platform to address their concerns.

It has been initiated by the Danish Arts Council’s intercultural advisory project led by Khaled Ramadan and is curated by de Main and Hasager.