Isbjørn/Polar bear
Denmark
2024
The polar bear has become a national symbol of the Danish affiliation to the north, it is a symbol of Danish quality and associated with the idea of Danish design, like the most sold porcelain sculptural from Royal Copenhagen or the logo of Nordisk Film. But looking in the national archives the polar bear seems to be dead, killed by the man who conquered this world of ice.
For more than three hundred years Greenland has belonged to Denmark, firstly as a colony and subsequently as a Danish province since 1953. Greenland and the Faroe Islands became part of the Danish kingdom via a constitutional amendment. This was implemented via a commitment from the United Nations, who in the same period worked intensively with decolonisation. My work revolves around Danish archives and collections, which have been collected by Danes and that are about or touch upon Greenland. I work from outside my own preconceptions and prejudices as a Dane who has never been to Greenland.
With the support of Danish Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Konstnärsnämnden (Swedish arts grants committee).
Portfolio
About the artist
Lars Dyrendom born 1981 Thisted, Denmark. Lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. In his artistic practice, the focus point is photographic archives and collections. A recurring theme is how people as groups relate to our surrounding world. How we stage and interact with different places and objects, how we take them into language and give them emotional, political and ideological meanings in and through photography. He have Master’s degree in Photography 2020 HDK-Valand