Søren Dahlgaard
Image courtesy of the artist2014 - 2015
B. 1973, Copenhagen, Denmark; lives in Melbourne.
Studied at Slade School of Fine Arts, London 1997–2002; PhD candidate, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2015–2017.
About the work by Else Marie Bukdahl D. phil. Affiliated professor at the University of Aalborg, Denmark and former Rector of the Royal Danish Academy of Art.
'The Danish artist Søren Dahlgaard has always experimented with both the artistic forms of expression and the materials that he has used. In 2008 he exhibited no less than 135 dough portraits at the Danish National Gallery of Art. In his videos he has drawn on surprising aspects of our reality. The same is true of his installations, for example, the Breathing Room at Singapore Biennale 2008, which is a very impressive art project. You enter a white room, which literally breathes.
His most comprehensive work is Growing vegetables on the coral island Hibalhidhoo. From 2002-04 he built a large vegetable farm on a small coral island in the Maldives. The idea was to find out which vegetables can grow in the humid and hot tropical climate of the Maldives in order to produce fresh vegetables for the inhabitants and tourist resorts in the area, since all vegetables were usually imported from far away. It was a pilot project in drip irrigation. This system together with other new forms of technology was introduced to many island communities and it has contributed to a better lifestyle for the inhabitants'.
Rasheed Araeen, artist and founding editor of the art journal Third Text, discussing the farm project Søren Dahlgaard initiated in Maldives from 2002-04 in relation to his manifest of Ecoaesthetics and art from 2009:
‘What is more; you have put yourself within the work, thus collapsing the division of subject and object. They have become organically and dynamically one, something the institutionally recognized conceptualism of Land Art could not achieve – as it became trapped within the museum walls’.
Listen to a recent interview with Dahlgaard about the Maldives project here.
Selected exhibitions include:
Venice Biennale 2013, Photographers Gallery London, The National Art Gallery Denmark, Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen, ECCO – Espaço Cultural Contemporâneo, Brasilia, Brazil, Art Building, Aarhus, Denmark, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. KOES - Museum of art in Public Spaces, Denmark, KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Finland, Gwangju Biennale, South Korea, Tbilisi Triennial, Georgia, Digital Art Center, Israel, CCA Andratx Contemporary Art Center, Mallorca Spain, CCBB Centro Cultural Banco Brasilia, Brazil, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw. Vancouver biennale, Canada. Blurrr 7 – International Performance Art Biennial, Center for Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv, Israel. Singapore Biennale 2008, The National Art Gallery, Maldives, Te Tuhi Arts Center, New Zealand, Galleria Civica Museum of contemporary art, Trento, Italy, Lianzhou International Photo Festival, China and MoMA P.S.1, New York.
Projects and Publications:
Curatorial:
www.the-maldives-exodus-caravan-show.com
Collaboration:
www.kaboomprocess.wordpress.com
Galleries:
Interviews:
http://clocktower.org/show/soren-dahlgaard-the-maldives-exodus-caravan-show