Ghost Dancers (2015)

Solo-exhibition at Ok Corral, Copenhagen, Denmark

"Ghost Dance" was a spiritual dance ritual that originated in the late 1880s on American Indian reservations. The Indigenous people´s condition were difficult and their survival challenged. In a vision during a solar eclipse, the Paiute Indian Wovoka had seen all Indians lifted towards the skies while the earth opened up and swallowed all white men, after which the world would return to its natural order. By dancing continuously in a circular pattern, a state of religious ecstasy would be induced, and the dream would come true.

In 1924, during the British Mount Everest expedition, the two mountaineers Mallory and Irvine disappeared. Mallory's body was found in 1999 while Irvine's is yet to be located, and it is still not known whether the two reached their goal to become the first people on the summit. The 1920s was a time of polar expeditions and mountaineering, as nations were racing to set records in reaching unexplored areas and put themselves on the world map.

Based on these stories, the exhibition is framing a necessity for a modern ghost-dance dedicated to our time, with the hope of changing a situation to the better, and clinging to the hope of reaching ones goals. It is a nostalgia for the past, qualms about the present and hope for the future. The works in the exhibition refer to the impossibility of starting over and returning to a past state. Ghost Dancers thus becomes a critical commentary on contemporary living standards, shaped by a constant forward driven development, that seems to have created an irreversible situation. The exhibition is inspired by the Robert Smithson quote; "... I do not 'think things go in cycles. I think things just change from one situation two the next, there's really no return ".

The exhibition is based on the circular movement and spiral shape, symbolizing the development and transformation from one state to another. Through repetitions, ritual setups and spiritual actions the exhibition is exposing a desperate hope of changing a situation, which has moved out of its course.


Projektet er støttet af Statens Kunstråd
The project is supported by the Danish Art Council
Statens Kunstråd