Unravelling Horizons in the Meantime

Unraveling Horizons in the Meantime is a group exhibition with artists Julie Edel Hardenberg, La Vaughn Belle, Chalana Brown, Dorothy Amenuke, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld and curator Daniela Agostinho.

The group has worked together since 2023 as the Reparative Encounters network, by cultivating artistic collaboration across Kalaallit Nunaat, the US Virgin Islands, Ghana and Denmark, regions differently impacted by Danish colonialism. Central to their work is the idea that colonialism separates and alienates, creating ruptures that remain to be repaired. By working side by side, the group foregrounds artistic collaboration and solidarity between these regions as key to repairing colonial divides.

After events in Nuuk, Saint Croix and Kumasi, the exhibition shows for the first time in Denmark the artistic practices of the group, featuring video works, collage, installation, textile pieces and fabric sculptures.

Unraveling Horizons in the Meantime unfolds the resonances between the group’s disparate artistic practices, pivoting around the visual and tactile horizons echoed in the artworks, and how in dialogue they reveal new horizons and perspectives on colonial legacies.

About Reparative Encounters
Reparative Encounters is a network of artists, curators and researchers from the US Virgin Islands, Ghana, Kalaallit Nunaat and Denmark that fosters exchange and artistic collaboration across locations impacted by Danish colonialism. The network is supported by the Globus programme of the Nordic Culture Fund and the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University.

Bios

Julie Edel Hardenberg, also called Paneeraq, is an Inuk-Kalaaleq, visual artist and researcher, born and raised in Nuuk, Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland. For the past 30 years, she has worked with identity and post-/decolonial perspectives as an overall theme. Her work explores the economic and social inter-dependencies between Denmark and Kalaallit Nunaat and their impact on Inuit-Kalaallit, caught in a shared identity between power and powerlessness. She is currently working on an artistic Research PhD entitled: “Between power and powerlessness – the de/colonized mind”.

Julie Edel Hardenberg, Meant to Meet, 2024

La Vaughn Belle (USVI) makes visible the unremembered. Through exploring the material culture of coloniality Belle creates narratives from fragments and silences. Working in a variety of disciplines her practice includes: painting, installation, photography, writing, video and public interventions. Her work with colonial era pottery led to a commission with the Royal Copenhagen. She is the co-creator of I Am Queen Mary. She has exhibited her work in the Caribbean, the USA and Europe in institutions, with large solo exhibitions at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (SC) and the National Nordic Museum (WA).

La Vaughn Belle (USVI)
Storm (How to Imagine Tropicalia as Monumental – as in where imperfections meet), 2022

Chalana Brown is a visual artist using the mediums of photography and cinematography. Chalana’s work explores coloniality and identity in the Caribbean, especially in the Virgin Islands, where she was born and raised. Chalana is presently working on a project exploring the evolution of Virgin Islands identity through history, fashion, photography and fabric entitled “E³: Exploration, Evolution, and Effectuation” and “Claiming Spaces: A Re-discovery of Virgin Islands Historic Sugar Mills and Spaces.” She is the director of Sanctuary Festival Troupe which bridges the gap between traditional festival tradition and modernized costuming displaying the culture of the Virgin Islands.

Dorothy Amenuke, PhD, is a Ghanaian artist who lives and works from Kumasi, Ghana. She is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST. Her artworks manipulate a variety of fabrics and fibres into objects and spatial installations that evoke feelings of containment and protection or even subtle repulsion. Through mixed media and installations, her interests focus on space consumption and on fibre’s revolutionary potential in contemporary art. She has several solo and group shows to her credit. Her work “How Far How Near” is in the collection of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. She currently coordinates the itinerant OFKOB Artists’ Residency in Ghana.

Bernard Akoi-Jackson, PhD, is an artist, curator, writer and educator who works from Accra/Tema/Kumasi. His interests cut across forms and media. His work is known for multi-disciplinary, audience implicating installations and performative “pseudo-rituals”. He holds a PhD in Painting and Sculpture from the College of Art and Built Environment, KNUST, Kumasi where he also lectures with particular interest in disruption and the revolutionary potential in contemporary art practice. He was co-curator of the Stellenbosch Triennale which opened in February 2020 in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld (DK), Bernard Akoi-Jackson (Ghana), Oceana James (USVI) & Julie Edel Hardenberg (KN).

…The Refused Witnesses…, Or, …Silence in Court…. (peculiar speculations on censorship via processes and practices of silencing, in cases where witnesses are silenced by the mechanisms of authoritative silence and thus sentences are deferred and eventually annulled) (2024-ongoing)

Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld, PhD, is a visual artist, independent researcher and educator. Working across media and in collaboration with various communities, she uses audio, video essays/installations, performance and text to explore the debris of broken histories and assemble their fragments into new compositions.Her work has been shown in numerous institutions and public spaces, most recently Nitja Center for Contemporary Art (2024), Rønnebækshom Kunsthal (2024), Opoku Ware II Museum, Kumasi (2024), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022 and 2015), Destiny’s, Oslo (2022) and Berlin Biennale/White West Symposium (2022).

Daniela Agostinho, PhD, is a curator and Associate Professor at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. Her research and practice lie in the field of visual culture with a focus on image archives and their afterlives; and collaborative artistic research invested in confronting and repairing colonial legacies. At Aarhus University, she sits on the Coordination Committee of the MA program in Curating. She has curated exhibitions for, among others, Opoku Ware II Museum Kumasi, Ghana (2024), ARIEL, Copenhagen (2021), CAM Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2018) and MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon (2017).