Graduation Show 2020

Are We All in This Together?
Funen Art Academy’s Sculpture Hall, 8 August to 20 September 2020

It is with great pleasure that Funen Art Academy invites you to the annual Graduation Exhibition which celebrates and presents works created by Wael Toubaji, Rune Viggo Jørgensen, Tao Hansen, Ditte Marie Frost Clausen, Jonas Hansen, Sara Arenfeldt, Emil Skamstrup, Jakup Nilsson, Morten Larsen and Mette Rasmussen.

By presenting a new body of works – from installation, virtual reality, performance, animation, sculpture and video work-, the students of Funen Art Academy’s Degree Show tackle uneasy questions that arise from troubled times, examining gestures and forms that voice their refusal to accept the conditions of this world.

The title of the show, Are We All in This Together?, is formulated as a question to unpack conventional notions of ‘we’ and ‘togetherness’ and voice the artists’ diverse perspectives on being an individual and a member of a community at the same time.

The use of the pronoun this in the title refers to different things: this is the illusion of a lifestyle that is only accessible by few. It is the inadequacy of abiding with established social structures.

However, it also alludes to the contingent historical times: the pandemic, the fallacy of capitalism, the rediscovery of mythology, the exploration of virtual realities, the connection to what feels urgent, the importance of our agency.

It is the condition where privilege is synonymous with exploitation and power. Whatever situation or condition it alludes to, the pronoun this remains ambiguous and opaque in the title to signal the uncertainty of the historical moment.

The works within the exhibition attempt to translate into visual terms philosopher Rosi Braidotti’s famous quote “(…), we are all in this together, but we are not the same.”  By reflecting on transitional states – having been and willing to be, the school left behind and the world to be joined – the exhibition opens an arena where artistic labor attempts to respond to systemic change.

The works in the show reflect on the artistic practice as a form of withdrawal and, at the same time, an ethical gesture to break free and perform agency.

Curator Irene Campolmi

Funen Art Academys Degree Show 2020 Are We All In This Together? is supported by Toyota Fonden, Møllerens Fond, Augustinus Fonden, 15. Juni Fonden and N. M. Knudsens Fond.