Nordic Outbreak opened in Nuuk at Katuaq the Cultural Centre of Greenland December 10-22, 2p13, with the theme Measuring Peripheries. The theme reflects perspectives on what defines the periphery and it’s meaning – how we “measure” it.
The ice in the Arctic is melting. This is changing the meaning of an area, which up until recently has been considered a landscape in the periphery difficult to access. The Arctic has now become a center for global questions relating to economy, security and energy policy. It has become an object of measuring – the assigning of spatial values, classification and systematization principles – and thus an object of a changed spatial politics. Nordic Outbreak: Measuring Peripheries considers the ontological implications founded in the measuring of space whereby a special perspective on the world is established. The selected artworks raise questions about the classification of the periphery. They reflect “images” of peripheries, such as the tundra, frozen rivers in the Nordics, Denmark’s west coast or rails vanishing in the horizon - that challenge spatial politics. The artworks map out urban and natural spaces through bodily movement and human relations, relating to how the body and the experience of time, space, landscape and aesthetics systematize our understanding and imagination of the meaning of space.
The artworks were installed in the striking foyer of Katuaq and could be seen indoors and from the street through large window facades while there reflection in the windows projected them onto the snow outside.
The exhibited works included: Jette Ellgaard, West Coast (2009), Ken Are Bongo, The wind whispers there is someone behind the tundra (2006), Jeannette Ehlers, Black Bullets (2012), Sigurdur Gudjonsson, Balance (2013), Styrmir Örn Gudmundsson, First Level (2012) og Second Level (2013), Mogens Jacobsen, Landskaber (2009), and Dan Lestander, Dreams and Wishes (2009).
The exhibition at Katuaq was curated by Tanya Toft.
More documentation from Nordic Outbreak – Nuuk here.