Graduation show 2015

Funen Art Academy’s graduation show 2015
Material Witness.

Opening: Thursday, May 21 at 5 pm, BRANDTS 13, 5000 Odense 

What is the relationship between art and the society, the community, and the culture that produces it? The question is central when dealing with art, whether you work with its creation or dissemination.

This year’s graduating students from Funen Art Academy offer many different answers to the question, but share the view that art possesses a special potential in relation to the experiencing, analysis, and understanding of the world around us.

The graduates have titled their final exhibition Material Witness to suggest that not only people but also objects attest to their surrounding’s occurrences. ‘Material witness’ is the legal term for the main witness and in this context, it refers to the artist as a key witness. But the material witness can also be about a material, an object, that acts as witness to the world’s events.

The exhibition’s diverse works range across a fictional letter exchange with Frida Kahlo, a monumental wooden structure with view into eternity, and investigative records of the landscape and the way we interact with everyday objects. All represent thoughtful reflections on major perspectives that our intimate relationship with the immediate surroundings also includes.

Participating artists: Iben Lilleriis Andersen, Jona Borrut, Currently Fictional (Gustav Bisgaard, Sarah Ridao & Oscar Yran), Sif Hedegård, Johanne Helga Heiberg Johansen, Jonna Ljósá, Jacob Morell, Sara Plinius and Katti Pärkson-Kull.

The exhibition is curated by Katarina Stenbeck, freelance curator and co-initiator of the project space Bureau Publik.

The catalogue Material Witness, published by the Funen Art Academy on occasion of the graduation show, includes presentations of the works in the exhibition and texts by Professor Department of Law, University of Southern Denmark, Ole Hammerslev, curator Katarina Stenbeck and Phd Torsten Bøgh Thomsen. Download the catalogue as pdf here: Material Witness catalogue

The exhibition is kindly supported by Toyota Fonden and Augustinus Fonden.