A joint project on human insecurity and art
This fall, 18 sculptures by the award-winning Icelandic artist Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir will be exhibited at University of Southern Denmark and in the cities of Odense and Copenhagen as a part of DIAS Fellow Dr. James Rogers’ interdisciplinary project on war and art.
The aim of CONNECTIONS is to utilise art as a medium through which to stimulate discussion, bridge differences, and connect people – at a time when societies are physically and ideologically divided.
The sculptures are androgynous symbols of humanity, an every-person, that the viewer can relate to regardless of race and gender. They put forward questions about our perception of everyday life and how we relate to each other. In some of the sculptures, the figures are just partly visible as they inhabit abstract forms that could be seen as a kind of protection or armor from the outside world.
The sculptures will be arranged on the ground around the Danish Institute for Advanced Study, Center for War Studies, the SDU campus, Nordatlantisk Hus, at Platanpladsen in Odense city and outside the Icelandic Embassy in Copenhagen.
As an interdisciplinary historian of war and human conflict, James Rogers has worked with Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir for the last five years. He has applied her work to stimulate new interpretations of how people are connected, divided, mentally and physically fragmented, and personally affected by war, conflict, and crisis. This with an overall goal to express understandings about the impact of crisis, catastrophe, and war on human society.