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deniz- press release
Jens Haaning February 18 - March 18 2000
Opening Friday February 18 from 18-20
It is a great pleasure to present an exhibition with new works of
Jens Haaning.
Jens Haaning focuses on how society is composed and how power is
expressed and communicated within it. As levels of immigration have
increased so has racism become more prevalent.
Jens Haaning is one of relatively few artists to have confronted
such issues in his work but in a way that acknowledges the complexities
of cultural assimilation on both sides.
Immigrants often quickly become an underclass and appear to the
host culture to have a few characteristics other than their obvious
foreign-ness.
One of Haanings most important previous works created for Denmark,
was Arabic Jokes, 1996, which took place in an ethnically mixed
area of Copenhagen. This two month long project consisted of an
advertising poster campaign which combined the image of a blonde
Danish pin-up with jokes written in Arabic. It was not obvious at
whom the posters were directed or what the motive was for their
production. The bringing together in this way of different aspects
of local and "ethnic" popular cultures, highlighted in a stark way
more serious aspects of the East West culture clash as well as how
it was impossible to keep communities separate when they were living
together.
The exhibition at Galleri Nicolai Wallner consist of 12 photographic
works featuring men of non-European origin who are now living in
Denmark. The photographs have been shot informally in the street
or in Foreigners' Clubs and a text has been added in the style of
a fashion magazines, which gives the name of the model as well as
the source, and price of the clothes and accessories the "model"
is wearing.
D. Elliott, catalogue text Organising Freedom
For more information about the exhibition, please contact us.
We welcome you in the gallery.
Kind regards
Nicolai Wallner
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