This project strand offers short residency opportunities in partner cities for 30 emerging artists. Each UEO city partner will send two artists on a residency to another partner’s city of a different art form, thereby seeking to enrich their professional practice through inter-disciplinary residencies. Artists are chosen on the basis of having demonstrated an interest in the hosting city’s Arts & Society contemporary European theme. They must also practice a different art form from that of the hosting city’s public event. The project offers the emerging artists the opportunity to travel without the pressure to produce work and ideally to experience UEO’s public events.
Birk Thomassen will travel to Lugo
Copenhagen’s other artist Sako Dersahagian will travel to Eleusis
Artist’s Statement
I am a visual artist and photographer based in Copenhagen. Since graduating from The Glasgow School of Art in 2016 I have been working primarily with the concepts of freedom and identity. Both on an abstract plan, in relation to themes such as sexuality and religion but also in a more concrete and physical manner, through looking at bodies, borders and carnality.
In my personal work I think of the camera as a tool in a post-photographic contemporary context where cameras and images are everywhere and accessible to everyone. In the digital age the camera can no longer be accepted as an objective interpreter of truth. This creates an interesting field of tension between fiction and reality, which to me is the most appealing and relevant aspect of photography. As an artist working with photography, I get to reflect an edited version of reality back to the viewer by obstructing the myth of the camera as a mediator between reality and image.
Artist’s Biography
Birk Thomassen was born in 1988 in Denmark. He studied in Scotland, graduating in 2016 with BA (Hons) in Fine Art Photography from The Glasgow School of Art (UK). He has been shortlisted for several awards (AON Community Art Award 2016 & Kassel Dummy Award 2014) and won the Danish Embassy Art Prize in 2017. His work has featured in multiple group shows and he has had several solo exhibitions:
2019 – Showcase, Arkiv 2300, Copenhagen (Denmark)
2017 – “KIN,” Warehouse9, Denmark
2017 – “CORE,” Embassy of Denmark, London
More info
Artist’s website