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Overdragelse




Overgaden, Copenhagen, Denmark, 29 Aug 2007 - 2 Nov 2008
For more info and exhibition folder please visit Overgaden >



Participating artists: A-Kassen, La Vaughn Belle, Nanna D. Buhl, Joachim Koester, Edgar Lake, Hugo Larsen and Sofie Thorsen




Overdragelse (eng. approx. Transfer) looks at the relationship between Denmark and the former Danish colony, the Danish West Indies, i.e. The U.S. Virgin Islands in an attempt to understand our common history and cultural heritage.

Several times in the late 19th and the early 20th century, Denmark tried to sell or trade the Virgin Islands to the U.S. and Germany. In 1917, the islands and their inhabitants were finally sold for 25 million dollars to the U.S. which marked the end of Denmark's Caribbean adventure as a colonial power. Even if they are seldom spoken of today, the Danish traces are still quite evident. The face of the past is visible everywhere on the islands: In the architecture, in almost hidden ruins and in remnants of plantations and centuries of war industry.

Among other works, Nanna Debois Buhl presents the video work From the Guide Book (2008) in which she combines text fragments of a Danish guidebook on the Virgin Islands (Politikens Turen går til Caribien & Dansk Vestindien) with a film sequence from the swimming pool at a hotel on St. Croix. Debois Buhl has selected all the sentences in the book beginning with the word "we" in order to consider how the guidebook seeks to create the illusion of a particular sense of fellowship with Denmark's former colony. The artist group A Kassen have sent a postcard from St. Croix addressed to themselves and then painted and subsequently photographed an enlarged version of it which they have since downscaled and now present in a postcard format in the exhibition. Furthermore, the exhibition features a larger collection of impressionist paintings by Hugo Larsen who travelled to Danish West Indies in order to record the everyday life, before the islands were sold to the U.S.

Curated by La Vaughn Belle and Jacob Fabricius. La Vaughn Belle is a visual artist from St. Croix and Jacob Fabricius is the director of Malmö Konsthall.
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