Site-specific video installation for Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket Museum.
Dec 5 2024 – May 18 2025, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Glyptoteket commissioned me to create a new video installation contextualizing iconoclasm in contemporary culture for their new archeological exhibition ICONOCLASM – Art as a Battleground.
The exhibition focuses on the intentional destruction of artworks – something we know today from climate activists throwing soup on paintings, Black Lives Matter protesters overthrowing statues, Islamic State’s destruction of cultural heritage sites in Nimrud and Palmyra, just to name a few examples. This might feel very contemporary but is really an ancient phenomenon. The exhibition showcases many stories of intentional destructions of statues and artworks from ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire and many other places.
My video installation creates a sort of time warp where the ancient past meets contemporary culture. My work especially focuses on contemporary, digital culture. And how the current iconoclastic battlefield is largely digital and online — in pixelated, grainy, compressed and distributed images of other images being destroyed. When one image is destroyed, another image is created.
Photos by David Stjernholm