By Helle Fagralid
Since 2016, Aarhus Visual Arts Center has created meetings between visual artists across age and experience. About the initiative 'Generationsmøder', head of AaBKC Kirstine Schiess Højmose says: "The art environment in Aarhus can be relatively divided between generations. By creating new connections, we can strengthen the ecosystems in the art world, so that the artists' networks are not only based on their own generations. This creates stronger communities and solidarity in the environment." So far, 36 visual artists have participated in Generationsmøder.
Two of the artists who have recently been paired by Kirstine Schiess Højmose are Birgit Bjerre (b. 1970) and Andrea Ostenfeldt Nielsen (b. 1994). I am attending their third meeting via an online connection, and even through the screen it is quite clear that they are, in their own words, a “sharp match”. The conversation flows easily and both say that they “quickly felt that there was a connection on a deeper level”.
Why did each of you sign up for Generation Meetings?
Andrea Ostenfeldt Nielsen: “I came back to Aarhus last summer after completing my education at the Bergen Academy of Fine Arts in Norway. And before that I lived in Copenhagen, so it was a bit like dropping off the moon when I came back here. I needed to ground myself, so I visited Aarhus Visual Arts Center.”
Birgit Bjerre: "I wanted to join because I'm a little tired of the way we divide our generations into pillars, both professionally and privately. I was interested in new angles and dimensions that arise when meeting a younger person. I also think that I have something to offer because of my age. And I wanted to be surprised. It's a bit of a boundary-breaking thing that you don't know who you're going to be paired with. It's a bit like a blind date."
Birgit Bjerre started at the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in 1994 and dropped out after the first two years. She then studied media studies and worked in communication for many years until she started working full-time with art again in 2013. As a teacher, including at the Aarhus Academy of Fine Arts, she experienced that the division of roles between teacher and student created a distance, and that she “actually wanted more to have long conversations with the students and meet the young people in a different way”, as she says. In her meetings with Andrea, she experiences an equality, where it is not about her having to “feed Andrea her experiences”, as she says.
How do you experience your meetings compared to when you meet with your peers?
AON: "I experience to a greater extent that there is a security that gives me courage. I feel that I can lean into Birgit a little. That it is about us creating a curious and playful place together. It is an energy that arises between us. I have also had such meetings with my peers, but there is a different calmness about meeting a person who is in a completely different place in life. After the academy, I really needed to be with people outside the art community. This meeting marks that I have now been inspired to make art again. Birgit has reflected the thoughts that I have about being intuitive, and that means that I dare to express myself about my way of being an artist."
BB: "I find that age and experience can make you a little tough, a little brash, whereas those in Andrea's generation are skilled at speaking with a gentleness. She reminds me that I probably once had that openness too, and it touches me, because I want to find that again. There is a generational difference in terms of taking care of yourself, which is extremely inspiring. At my age, it's easy to fall into certain patterns, which are then easier to spot when you meet someone from another generation."
Andrea Ostenfeldt Nielsen, For the experience, Belgium, 2024. Photo: Private.
For example, what do you talk about when you meet?
BB: “This is the third time we have met and the first time, when we met at my workshop, we had been given some questions to talk about. They were about finances and foundations, if we were going to help each other career-wise, but we would rather talk about what we are interested in and what we experience in the world. We found out that some of the most important things in our art lie outside the art world. It is at the moment we stop being interested in it that it all happens.”
AON: “Yes, the works that came to fruition during my time at the academy, I actually made during the summer holidays.”
BB: “That's how it was for me too. So we're a bit of two defectors in a way, even though you completed the education. We've both had unfortunate experiences in that system. We also talk about how the culture in the environment can be destructive to the creation of art. The way we interact with each other, where a system of expectations for a particular way of being and acting arises, and which gives rise to a new form of conformity and new systems of power. You have to be willing to see that and fight against it.”
What obstacles did you encounter at the Academy of Fine Arts?
BB: “I grew up with a lot of resistance from my own family, and when I came to the Academy of Fine Arts, I thought that now I would finally be free. But that didn’t happen, on the contrary, I experienced that I was making the “wrong” art, because I was making pictures, and at that time you were supposed to make video installations and performances. And then I experienced a hatred for the petty bourgeois, because I had a child when I started, and just having a stroller was perceived as petty bourgeois. There was a cultural elitist and angry atmosphere. Later, I made a performance that I called “I’m too happy to be an artist”, as a reaction to that anger.”
AON: “There was a lot of diversity at the academy in Bergen, so there wasn’t this elitist attitude. But the energy could be tough, there was a lot of anger. I came from the dance world, where you work with energy in a different way. At the academy, there was a lack of presence and listening from several of the teachers, who were very result-oriented and didn’t seem particularly interested in talking about the ideas and thoughts behind the works. And it is in that presence and collaboration that art exists for me. However, it must be said that there were also some really good teachers, and that what each of us needs in our artistic practice is individual.”
'Dear Enemy,' solo exhibition Birgit Bjerre, Bunkermuseum Hanstholm, 2022. Photo: Jens Peter Engedal.
Before the interview, I asked Andrea and Birgit to each bring a work that they could talk about together, but both artists “synchronously felt more like doing something together,” as Andrea says. And just as they quickly forgot all about the paper with suggestions for conversation topics during their meetings, in this case they also chose to follow their own common flow.
AON: “I wanted us to go exploring together, that it should be about the present instead of looking back in time.”
BB: "The point of meeting is not to have a MUS conversation, but for us to explore together what interests us."
AON: “Birgit had mentioned a picture she had imagined of us, where we were just lying there listening. So I felt like we should make that picture.”
BB: “At our first meeting, we agreed that being a witch is a thing of the past. So we laid down in the remains of this burnt-out bonfire I had in my garden. We don't see it as a manifestation of all sorts of agendas, but more as an expression of a way of being in the world, where you are, for example, good at sensing other people.”
AON: “You can see it as an attitude, a way of perceiving the world, rather than something sublime. And it is central to both of our artistic lives.”
BB: “It was something I practiced a lot when I was younger, and when you came and told me about your sejdvandring, which is based on a Nordic shamanistic ritual, it woke me up again. During our performance by the fire, we talked about how there can also be skepticism towards the artist in society. A perception that you are spoiled because you do something you want to do. That the resistance that can be towards pleasure is originally a Protestant resistance to freedom.”
AON: “That resistance exists not only in the outside world, but also as a voice inside you, which questions what you do and slows you down. So we wanted to put ourselves in the fire and be strong enough to resist it.”
BB: “We have talked a lot about practicing being yourself and not trying to meet other people's expectations.”
AON: “It's a mix of wanting to be welcoming, getting the energy up and seeing what happens, and at the same time remembering to stick to yourself.”
BB: "There will always be a recipient you have to deal with, whether it's your colleagues or a gallery owner, but if you constantly massage other people's expectations, bad art will come out of it, and nothing original will come out of it either."
AON: "It's exciting to talk about originality versus authenticity. I would rather be authentic and follow my inner fire than, for example, like we used to have to do at school, check online to see if others have had the same idea before you start."
BB: “We both believe that we are all connected as people by virtue of our experiences, which means that you can let go of the idea of the original, and that's nice.”
Portrait of Andrea Ostenfeldt Nielsen. Photo: Private.
Where are each of you now in your artistic life?
BB: “I have gotten over the fear that people won’t understand what I do. It’s probably come with age that I have made peace with the fact that not everyone understands me either.” needs to understand it. When you are new to the art world, there are so many boxes you have to deal with: finances, funding applications, exhibition venues, gallery owners and buyers. You get really sad just saying those words, because that is not all that makes the ideas arise or gives you the desire to create.
AON: "Only now do I feel the desire to make money from my art and to exhibit in a gallery. Otherwise, I have mostly been concerned with the material and experimenting. It has not been my focus, but I could have used a subject at the academy that would have prepared me a little better for how to have a sustainable artistic life. As soon as I got out, I almost gave up."
BB: "I regularly give up. Especially when something happens in my private life that makes art completely indifferent to me. It's almost like an unhappy love affair when I have difficulty doing what I love most. When there is no access to the ideas, but then it comes back to me again. It has been nice to be able to talk to Andrea about that kind of thing."
AON: “Yes, about the feeling that everything is turned upside down, and you can't see yourself as an artist, but that fortunately it turns back around.”
What is the most important experience you take away from your meetings?
AON: "You have helped me take myself more seriously. The way we talk opens up a world that I actually know well, but which I can sometimes get far away from. Together with you, I feel the importance of my artistic practice. It was on the way, but now I have more desire to express myself."
BB: "In the same way! I've also felt like slowing down even more after meeting you. And paying more attention to what's fragile and vulnerable, because I think it's rocker cool that you're capable of that at your age, and it inspires me. It's made me look a little softer at my practice. For many years, it's been a lot about producing, being diligent and nurturing my contacts. It will help me that we talk together in the future, so that I can more easily stick to that attitude."
Portrait of Birgit Bjerre. Photo: Jens Peter Engedal.
Have you talked about meeting again after this last meeting?
AON: "Yes, we're going on a trip. We're also going to evaluate with Kirstine, but otherwise it's up to us what we do in the future."
BB: “And in August we will be speaking at the Cultural Meeting in Mors about 'Generation Meetings'. I believe we can continue to help each other with many things.”
Would you have had the relationship you have with each other now if your meeting had not been initiated by AaBKC?
BB: "It's a gift that Kirstine clearly saw a match, because it probably wouldn't have happened by itself."
AON: "Yes, it can be hard to see where else to go when you need this kind of sparring. It's pretty amazing what happened in this meeting, and it probably wouldn't have happened if we had just met on the bus, for example."
BB: "We can allow ourselves to speak more freely because someone from the outside has brought us together. It is made important in a more formalized way while at the same time being a completely free space."
Cover image:
BILLEDKUNSTNEREN asked Andrea and Birgit to each bring a work to the interview that they could talk about. They responded performatively by lying in a burnt-out bonfire.
Photo: Jens Peter Engedal