Bikuben

Bikuben explores Danish contemporary art as a framework for understanding how the present may, albeit paradoxically, inform the past. Focusing on themes revolving around the intertwined nature of truth and fiction, history and memory, and the personal versus the communal, this exhibition investigates how relationships across cultural and generational divides have the potential to reveal the complexity of identity, displacement, appropriation, and collective consciousness.

The title, Bikuben, was inspired by the history that has informed the research for this exhibition. Between 1876 and 1935, Bikuben was a newspaper published in Utah for the Danish immigrants as a way to foster cultural connectivity and a sense of community. For this exhibition, the word bikuben (meaning beehive) is reimagined as a way to highlight the many fascinating ties between Denmark and Utah in terms of ideas regarding progress, industry, and utopia.