Artist: Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan
Exhibition title: VE
Venue: Huset for Kunst & Design, Holstebro, Denmark
Date: April 20 – July 14, 2024
Photography: ©David Stjernholm / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Huset for Kunst & Design, Copenhagen
In the exhibition, Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan works with the Danish word Ve and its meanings. In the word, lies the woman’s pain when she gives birth – “contractions” or “labor”, a gendered pain. Historically, the word ve (“woe”) also covers a more general pain and can be used as an incantation: “Woe to the one who harms my child”. The works in the exhibition consist of paintings, drawings and photographs that unfold the pain visually. Underlying is the pain that we – perhaps especially in the Western world – inflict on ourselves, other people, other species and the climate. It is thus the very large body in pain that the exhibition thematizes. The body that for millennia has used the art of dealing with crises emotionally and spiritually. With Ve, Lind-Valdan wants to connect with the bodies that have created images in a time of crisis. Ve is thus also about how the artistic act connects artists’ bodies across vast periods of time, from the cave painter to the contemporary painter.
The exhibition revolves around animals in its motifs. As such, the intention is not to portray these, but to visualize – through the animal – the psychological effect that loss and the feeling of loss of power have. The paintings in the exhibition bear the mark of the painting process and the artist’s own body. The photographs in the exhibition are snapshot-like and yet tightly composed. They refer to a greater community across the divide between nature and culture. Suggestive narratives emerge between the individual works, like a kind of exhibition rebus. Despite the different media, the works share the “ve” theme and a basic performative method: It is as much the viewer’s body as intellect that feels the pain.
Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan (b. 1985) is educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2011. In addition to her artistic practice, she is contributing to national as well as international art discussions through her contributions to the leading Nordic art journal for contemporary art, Kunstkritikk.no. In 2014, together with her partner, the art historian Rune Gade, she founded Forlaget Sød tøs, which primarily publishes handmade artist books in small editions.
Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan has also curated the international group exhibition Mama Mia in 2022 at Willumsens Museum. The exhibition combined contemporary art with sketches by J.F. Willumsen based on a focus on gender, sexuality and identity. The exhibition included works from a number of artists who, in various media, challenge gender stereotypes and common ideals.
Her works has been bought by, among others SMK, the New Carlsberg Foundation, the National Photo Museum and Sorø Art Museum.
