Common Creatures, Bewildering Beasts
Curated by Rikke Hansen and Tanja Nellemann Kruse
Exhibition period : June 6 - June 28
OPENING HOURS:
Thursday - Saturday 2-5pm
‘An Infestation (detail)’ 2025, insects, pupa, plant roots. Site specific installation.
“We are not alone, but share a home with bedbugs, silverfish, bearded dragons, dogs and cats. Wolves cross borders. At the same time, our oceans are threatened by overfishing. The pig lives on your plate or takes its place in other links in the production chain. There are animals for human consumption, animals for medicine. Nature and non-human animals are at the same time incredibly close and quite far away.
In Common Creatures, Bewildering Beasts, Danish and international artists invite the animalistic in. Inspired by Asger Jorn's iconic modification painting The Disturbing Duck, 1959, the exhibition explores what happens when animals no longer seem to fit into traditional classifications, but become too big, too small, too intrusive, threatening to overpower us or perhaps disappear altogether.
The exhibition is not about so-called “wild” animals, but about shared habitats, fusions, unstable categories and boundaries that are crossed. Here we meet pets, laboratory animals, birds, hunters, researchers, and more. Some animals are so common that we barely notice them. Others fill us with wonder. Still others are merely temporary tenants. Migrating birds occasionally change the soundscape. Our habitats are constantly up for negotiation. We are both hosts and guests in each other’s worlds. Common Creatures, Bewildering Beasts focuses on the geo-flexible frameworks that characterize our more-than-human coexistence.
Here, bodies mingle with bodies. The exhibition asks questions such as: When does the human stop and the animal begin? How similar are we to each other, and how much do we influence each other? Is your dog your best friend? Do you understand his language? And what ethical and ontological questions arise in the encounter between species?”
The participating artists are: Kathy High (US), Catherine Clover (GB/AUS), Angela Bartram (GB), Tessa Farmer (GB), Snæbjörnsdottir/Wilson (IS/GB), Lisa Strömbeck (S/DK), Nasan Tur (DE), Andrea Stense (DK), Sarah Sikorie (NO), Svend -Allan Sørensen (DK), Noelia Mora Solvez (DK), Tanja Nellemann Kruse (DK) and Rikke Hansen (DK).
The exhibition is generously supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, the Municipality of Aarhus, the New Carlsberg Foundation and the Augustinus Foundation.