MADSDINESEN Fall/Winter 2011

“A legion of horrible, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform cavalry jackets, one in stove pipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in head gear of crane feathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeon tailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armour of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate ad pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace and sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses ears and tails worked with bits of brightly coloured cloth and one whose horses whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces were gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet that the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in a region beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. —–Blood meridian or the evening redness in the west Cormak McCarthy—– Is it an irrevocable instinct of mankind to suppress crime, especially when executed by one’s own hands? Must we, as individuals carry the responsibility of a collective crime committed by demised generations? Does this active denial of one’s negative history, mean that it will in fact become irretrievable? Pride, shame, guilt, aggression- the research for my collection „Pain is felt by all…“ is based on an exploration of the colonial history of my home country, Denmark. Denmark is mostly recognised as a pleasing concoction of Hamlet, Tivoli, German tourists and The Little Mermaid. However, the shadowed memories of Denmark’s past and it’s brutal, raw, and inglorious suppression of countries including Greenland, Iceland or Ghana, show a stark discrepancy. The two worlds still sit uneasily, side by side. Coloniser, slave trader, oppressor and yet also the home (according to statistics), of the world’s most satisfied people. „Pain is felt by all…“ is the staging of a spirit world- silhouettes without face or nation. A collage of cultural and disparate typologies, converge in the dark crevices of Denmark’s history. It is a highly personal stance on the collective denial of our past. Historically charged garments simultaneously appear as modern day caricature. Insignias of power are heroically exceeded and ironically staged but presiding above all, is the enthroned swan. A national symbol- the soul and beast of the collection. „Pain is felt by all…“ is an exploration, a journey and an attempt to understand the past so as to master the present.” – Mads Dinesen