In August, the University of Copenhagen will open the doors to RECAST, a large group exhibition organised to mark the 150th anniversary of women's admission to university. The exhibition challenges the university's tradition of using art to commemorate and narrate its history. The art collection includes more than 130 portrait busts, exclusively honouring white, male scientists.
With RECAST, we invite 13 contemporary artists to rethink and challenge this monument tradition, which has for centuries materialised what people and events we as a society honour and commemorate. A selection of the university's historical busts have been relocated to the University Library, where they are brought into dialogue with new contemporary artworks by:
Anne-Mette Schultz, benandsebastian, Elisabeth Toubro, Henriette Heise, Ida Kvetny, Jeannette Ehlers, Jóhan Martin Christiansen, Julie Edel Hardenberg, Lea Guldditte Hestelund, Lea Porsager, Maria Nørholm Ramouk, Nanna Debois Buhl and Noah Umur Kanber.
Each of the artists occupies their own reading room niche, creating interventions with artworks of different sizes and in different media that hack the architecture of the university and uncover new notions of research and the exchange of knowledge in the old university library.
RECAST is not just a celebration of a historical milestone. It's about imagining a different kind of future for the university and for society - a future where knowledge is not produced in isolation but through a multitude of voices, collaboration and recognising the body as a sensory, thinking and inclusionary part of knowledge production.
In tandem with the exhibition, the public is invited to participate in the conversation through a series of artist talks, performances and interdisciplinary conversations in the library.
