NATIVES: THE DANES
Natives: The Danes is a series of diptych portraits based on the photographic and museal tropes and conventions of historical anthropology.
Fascinated by the photographs of her explorer grandfather, and equally perturbed by racist stereotyping in contemporary Denmark, the artist chose subject ethnic Danes to one of the West’s historical tools of colonisation.
Photography representing ’primitive’ peoples versus Western ’civilisation’ was, and all too often still is, seen as an objective and scientific medium, its alleged objectivity distracting from and disguising the ideological role and purposes it has served.
The artist used an 1892 edition of the book Notes and Queries of Anthropology, discovered during her research in the photographic archives of the National Museum of Denmark, as a form of fieldwork manual: its pseudo-scientific guidelines on how to photograph and measure ‘natives’ from the front and behind using tape measures and rulers. The subsequent performative aspect of the project also included deliberately and ironically adopting the role of ‘artist as explorer’ – complete with tweed knickers and brogues – and embarking on a series of expedition complete with a local guide and an old Rolleiflex camera on loan from one of Denmark’s ethnographic collections.
Using this old equipment made the roles of the object and subject of photographing explicit – a way of demonstrating and asking people to experience the objectifying conditions under which Western representations of the Other have been created historically. Those photographed remain nameless - identified solely by the places they come from.
During her subsequent interviews with the people she photographed the artist also collected anthropological artefacts as evidence of the ‘native’ way of life. An eclectic collection of items including crocheted toilet-roll covers, hot-water bottles and kitchen utensils, which she installed in old museum vitrines complete with labels miming those still in use in exhibition displays.
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EXHIBITIONS
Natives: The Danes, 2008
Installation View: Nikolaj Kunsthal, Denmark.
Natives: The Danes, 2010
Installation View: Festival de la Luz, Argentina.
Natives: The Danes, 2011
Installation View: Pingyao, China.
INFO
NATIVES: THE DANES
Technical specifications:
Archival ink print, 110 x 110 cm, edition 3 +2 AP/ or 50 x 50 cm, edition 5+ 2 AP/ or 30 x 30 cm