Obama's People
January 23 - March 14 2010
One year after Barack Obama's inauguration in the White House in January 2009, Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, presents a unique insight into the staff surrounding the most powerful man in the world.
Shortly before the Inauguration, British photographer Nadav Kander (b. 1961) made a series of 53 portraits of people appointed by the President to trusted positions.
Kander's series puts faces to this newly-defined machinery of power which previously remained anonymous; but the diversity at play in terms of age, sex and ethnic backgrounds is also an obvious element in the Obama administration's way of presenting itself with a more directly human appeal. The series is a period picture of the optimism emanating from the new staff - but Kander's photographs at the same time lay themselves open to the spectator's own impressions and interpretations of the people portrayed here.
Ismar Cirkinagic in collaboration with A-LAB:
Bricks of Enlightenment - ML2090 First Phase
January 23 - March 14 2010
Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, presents the total installation Bricks of Enlightenment - ML2090 First Phase by Bosnian-Danish artist Ismar Cirkinagic. The exhibition is an investigation of how power is staged, taking as its starting point George Orwell´s dystopian science fiction novel 1984.
George Orwell wrote his novel in 1948, inspired by Stalin´s totalitarian regime, and by switching the last two digits of the year in which it was written he came up with the year 1984. Similarly, the title of Ismar Cirkinagic´project ML2090 refers to year 2009 in which it was launched. The letters of the title, ML - an abbreviation of the Ministry of Love - refers to the Orwellian body monitoring the population´s love and loyalty vis-à-vis "Big Brother" in the superstate Oceania. This mostly takes place by using torture and by inducing fear.
Based on thorough artistic research, Cirkinagic, in co-operation with the architectural drawing office A-LAB, has created a unique visualization of a building which normally exists only in the reader´s imagination. The exhibition presents the opportunity to walk around in a scale 1:1 section of the building, assisted by an audioguide for directions, as well as a model of the whole building.
