The Karen Blixen Museum announces its new exhibition, In Your Words by artists Nanna Debois Buhl (DK) and Brendan Fernandes (CA). On view through 4. September, 2011.
Buhl and Fernandes have collaborated to create six works which take as their departure point the themes and writings of Karen Blixen / Isak Dinesen, thereby initiating a dialogue with the author’s life and oeuvre. At the same time, this exploration into Blixen’s work becomes a reflection of the artists’ experiences of traveling and living in different places. Ideas of identity, nationality, language, translation and exchange between the continents are interwoven with postcolonial discourse. Located in Blixen’s home of Rungstedlund, this exhibition of new video and installation-based works poses complex questions about our globalized world, as seen through the trajectories of Blixen herself as well as the artists.
Nanna Debois Buhl was born in Aarhus, Denmark, while Brendan Fernandes was born in Nairobi, Kenya near the Ngong Hills where Blixen lived. The artists first met in New York and began collaborating on this project thereafter. They have both traveled and lived in many different places and understand the significance of adaptation through their journeys. The question of identity has become very important in the work of both artists–similar to the ways in which Blixen explores these themes through her writing, most notably in her book Out of Africa. The exhibition thus aims to explore questions about history and belonging through the powerful and affecting modes of literature and visual art.
Brendan Fernandes is a Canadian visual artist based between Toronto and New York. He completed The Whitney Independent Study Program (2006–7) and earned his MFA (2005) from The University of Western Ontario, Canada. He has exhibited widely including: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Art in General, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal; The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton; and The Third Guangzhou Triennial, China. He was shortlisted for the 2010 Sobey Art Award and is represented by Diaz Contemporary, Toronto.
Nanna Debois Buhl is a Danish visual artist based in New York and Copenhagen. She participated in The Whitney Independent Study Program, New York (2008-09) and received her MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2006). She has exhibited internationally and nationally, recently at Art in General, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Eleven Rivington, NY; Lunds Konsthall, Sweden; Ar/Ge Kunst, Italy; Kunsthallen Brandts, Denmark; and Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark. Her work is in the collections of the Museum for Contemporary Art and The National Museum of Photography, Denmark.
In connection with the exhibition, a publication with texts by poet Mette Moestrup, Lasse Horne Kjældgaard, Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen, and the museum’s director, Catherine Lefebvre, will also be released.
The exhibition is supported by: Danish Arts Council, Direktør Werner Richter og
Hustrus Legat and the Canada Council for the Arts
The Karen Blixen Museum
Rungsted Strandvej 111
DK-2960 Rungsted Kyst
Denmark
T (+45) 45 57 10 57
www.blixen.dk