Reinventing oneself / Mille Kalsmose

By: Sisse Malene Markvardine Petersen

 

The personal is a tricky thing to deal with in art – if the personal is understood as the private. However for Danish visual artist Mille Kalsmose the personal is always a part of the artistic process - and as subject for her motifs she uses her own life in subtle ways. Her autobiographical strategies are to be characterised as performative – partly in that she put her own life at risk, literally so to say, another being that she questions and test the concept and construction of identity.  For Mille Kalsmose, identity and self-image is constructions that should not be looked on as stable positions – and she’s herself an example on how one has the power to transform and multiply ones own identity – not least by name. Her art is a continuous reinventing (her)-self.

 

The exhibition “Outrospective” brings focus on identity, self-image and human relations in which you yourself are a part. It’s obviously a personal motivated project that never seems to flip over into the intimate and private. But what are we as audience to expect and experience from your autobiographical and outrospective installation at WAS?             

“I first and foremost hope that (you) the spectator will start to reflect about the concept Identity and how one pictures oneself. The installation is made so that the viewer is put into a position, where s/he should experience him-/herself as looking, but being looked at, at the same time.” 

 

The installation then consists of different element, where the mirror is both made concrete and symbolic - how?

“I’m not concerned with form or formal aspects, what’s important to me is matter and content – and that matter is my own life. I do not want to or do not pretend to tell thruths. What I want is to bring other people experiences and open their eyes to what life is and how you can change it personally.

In the series “Formed by Other” I’m picturing persons I’m influenced by, both  as a person and as an artist. The leaned-back-male-types are all connections that represent ways of looking at and interacting with and influence how I see myself. There is fx the collector, the gallerist and my father, who have all played a part in forming my self-image. But there is also the series “Mirror Mirror” representing women picturing themselves. These women are friends of mine and also in the process of creating their identity. They are investigating their self-image, modelling it in the eyes, ideas and expectations of others and themselves. You also find my person is in some a part of the motif. 

 

 I’ve been living in Barcelona, where I’ve studied for several years, and a part of my experience there was, that as a woman you are something due to being a woman, and not only due to a profession. So the two series that I’m presenting is not about men vs. women, or women being an object for or product of the male gaze. It’s about how we are culturally and socially formed and how we form our own identity.”

 

On the contemporary art-scene you find other younger artists dealing with the autobiographical and the concept of identity, fx. the former Claus Beck-Nielsen now known as Das Beckwerk.  Do you in some ways see your own art-practice as what one might call a life-practice?

“My work is to be seen as lifeworks, more than singular works. You could say that I’m the connecting link between the individual works. As in the project I’m working on right now - a sound installation where I’m displaying all my name changes and information from my birth certificate on man high transparent plexi-glass cylinders, and as an associative supplement will put it in relation to the sound of my voice, during a hypnosis session. This project deals among other things with how ones name define and reflect identity and the concept of family.