Trine Søndergaard, Trine Søndergaard & Nicolai Howalt, Eva Löfdahl

About

Trine Søndergaard (b. 1972) creates works that connect stories across and beyond time. Søndergaard’s work is marked by a precision and sensibility that co-exists with an investigation of the photographic medium, its boundaries and what constitutes an image. Layered with meaning and quiet emotion, her works are highly acclaimed for their visual intensification of our perception of reality.

At first glance, the six untitled photogravures from 2021 appear to be classic portraits. However, the faces of the female models are turned away from the camera, obscured by their draped hair. Søndergaard invites us to dwell on details and gradual changes in the physical world that might otherwise escape us: individual white hairs or entire strands become visible and shift into focus. Thoughts about the transience of time, and ideas of visibility and invisibility are brought forth.

Eva Löfdahl (b. 1953) also focuses on the depiction of hair in her four etchings from the 1989 series, Untitled Hair. In Löfdahl's work, the birds eye view of heads with varying hairstyles, drawn in drypoint, appear detached from the body, which seems to have disappeared completely in the blackness of the aquatint. Just like Søndergaard, she challenges our habitual way of seeing things, whether be it in the form of sculptures, objects, paintings and drawings, or installations in public space.

In the photogravure series Dying Birds, 2006–10, Trine Søndergaard and Nicolai Howalt (b. 1970) captured birds in their struggle to survive: the moment of being struck, the tumbling moment, and finally the moments of the earthward fall. The animals gliding down to the ground appear gracefully even though the project is an expansion of How to Hunt (2005); works in which Søndergaard and Howalt present the ancient tradition of hunting in its contemporary incarnation as a sport and explore its transformation from a necessity of survival to a symbol of cultural privilege. Eloquently and subtly, Søndergaard and Howalt deal with and comment on the exploitation and cultural commodification of nature.