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Ablutions of the Tongue – now online
The Round Tower is closed until further notice due to recommendations from the authorities on preventing the spread of COVID-19. This prevents access to the current exhibition in the Library Hall “Ablutions of the Tongue”. However, we now present an online version where video works, texts and sound bites are available.
The art exhibition “Ablutions of the Tongue” is a transdisciplinary group exhibition which deals with the concept of body, belonging and identity.
A common trait that connects the exhibiting artists is that they challenge, stretch or rethink our notion of normalcy. Through film, performance, installation and drawing, the artists present the precarious and traumatized body; the body that has been victim to violence, or the body that carries a disability as well as the racialized body, along works that deal with psychotic visions, sounds and touch which in all challenges our perception of reality.
The exhibition is initiated by Kristina Steinbock and co-curated by Louise Lassen Iversen.
Artists: Sian Kristoffersen (DK), Stella Geppert (DE), Katrin Ströbel (DE), Kristina Steinbock (DK), Linda Lazer (N), Lissa Rivera (US) and Peter Birkholm/Michael Schiøler (DK).
Join a tour around the exhibition here:
Lissa Rivera (US):
Venice Apartment
Beautiful Boy Venice Apartment. Copyright Lissa Rivera 
Photo by Julie Nymann
The artwork Venice Apartment is part of a larger photo project called Beautiful Boy. With this project Rivera takes her interest in photography and its relationship to identity, sexuality and gender to a personal level in that the subject of her photos is her partner and muse BJ Lillies. Together the two explore feminine fantasies that have existed through time.
Katrin Ströbel (DE)
Tools and Weapons I (Donna) 2020, Tools and Weapons II (Silvia) 2020, Tools and Weapons III 2020, Agathe 2018, Kopffüßer 2019/20
For the exhibition Katrin Ströbel has created a series of sculptures and photographies, that perceive the non-normative of the (human) body – not as default – but as a quality: queer bodies in a permanent state of elasticity and transition. Fragmented, tired, inactive or beaten bodies resisting the demands of late capitalism. Ströbels artworks are erotic and poetic tools of resistance and thereby claim that fragility and vulnerability become advantages in times of crisis.
Kristina Steinbock (DK):
Photo: Julie Nymann
The video work Divine Decadence, darling is inspired by early 20th century cabaret scenes which is evident in how the scenery around the five performers sexual and political testimonies are staged. The intimacy and sensuality that people with disability embody is seldom spoken of in society. This artwork invites the audience into a surreal documentarism that celebrates the amorous and decadent while also combating taboos about disability. The empirical data that has been collected while creating the videowork is used in the work on paper: Are you touching me, I thought to ask.
Linda Lazer (N)
Between Our Body and the Breathing Earth, pt. 1-2
Linda Lazers contribution to the exhibition is the videowork Between Our Body and the Breathing Earth. The video seeks out to explore the relationship between humans and the other species with which we share the planet and to visualize links between exploitation of nature and racism. There is a close connection between the extraction of West African natural ressources by the West and the history of colonialism. Relating the history of the industrial materials to the history of our brown bodies. The work is part of a larger project called A New Value System With Images and Symbols That Connect Us to Each Other and to The Planet. This project envisions an alternative future where borders between culture, genders, human and nature are erased.
Peter Birkholm & Michael Schiøler (DK)
Michael Schiøler: No Titel, 2019/20 Peter Birkholm: No Titel, 2020
Birkholm & Schiøler met each other through newspaper advertisements in 2016 and have since collaborated on music and drawing projects. They are both affected by skizophrenia which is also their point of departure for the exhibition. Through drawings and sound they attempt to illustrate life with a mental disorder. Where Schiøler focuses on trying to express and specify life with skizophrenia, Birkholm tries to investigate the reality of hallucination through documetary sketches. In the sound piece the two artists put words to some of the more or less abstract experiences they have had.
Sian Kristoffersen (DK):
Mythoplokos
The installation Mythoplokos is based on a greak bronze statue of emperess Aquilla Severa and the inner life of the statue. The statue was damaged after its making and there are several theories on how it happened. In dealing with the statue and its history, Kristoffersen works with the idea of connectedness through time and space; with the notion of a membrane between the world of the objects and that of people being broken.
Stella Geppert (DE):
With her newest performance InsideT Stella Geppert takes her inspiration from how experienced and transgenerational trauma can transform the body. As a part of the performance Geppert has created a form of clothing that influences and guides the performers movements and posture energetically inscribe themselves into the space as oversized drawings that are left on the floor as a kind of archive.
InsideT, 2020 (video)
InsideT Learning from the Body, 2020 (performance)
Photo: Julie Nymann
The exhibition is part of
Supported by: Rundetaarn, Statens Museum for Kunst, Goethe-Institut Dänemark, Rådet for Visuel Kunst, Københavns Kommune, L.F. Foghts Fond and sponsored by Samsung, Premium Beer, Husted Vin.