Against the Grain

Against the Grain addresses a very important topic of our time; the relationship between the explosive growth in our use of technology and the global strain on the environment which follows. The two Danish artists Anu Ramdas and Christian Danielewitz have travelled to the industrial town of Baotou - the epicenter of the Chinese mining industry, in Inner Mongolia. Here they have created the works on location, using radioactive material from the gigantic tailings dam Weikuang, situated on the outskirts of the city. Weikuang Dam is a nightmare landscape, which has formed as a result of the ruthless hunt for rare earth elements, the essential material basis of our high-tech societies.

During the exhibition an event programme will take place at Galleri Image, including a screening of Chinese artist Zhao Liang’s film Behemoth, a poetic tale about greedy mining and Chinese ghost towns. There will also be talks with the artists and contributors to the book that is published as a result of the exhibition, among them cultural catastrophe researcher Jacob Lillemose and art historian and photo scholar Lars Kiel Bertelsen.

Anu Ramdas and Christian Danielewitz are both educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 2014 they published White City / Black Desert – Black City / White Desert, an ambitious artist book about the relation between geology, architecture and photography.

The exhibition is part of the 2-year research- and exhibition project ’Contemporary Art and Documentary Culture’ conducted by Peter Ole Pedersen, assistant professor at Aarhus University, curator and artist. 

Against the Grain is also part of the Photo Biennale, which takes place as a collaboration between Gallery Image, Fotografisk Center in Copenhagen, and Brandts in Odense. The symposium “Global Challenges in context to photography, contemporary art and social media” is part of the Photo Biennale. During the symposium, a number of art historians, artists and photography theoreticians will elaborate on their different critical positions within contemporary photography in relation to urgent global challenges.

"Global Challenges" takes place on Friday 26th of August at 8.30am –5 pm at CPH Conference.
Find the full programme here 

Other events at Gallery Image:
September 15th at 5-7 pm: TALK: Anu Ramdas and Christian Danielewitz in dialogue with Lars Kiel Bertelsen
October 4th: Theory Tuesday session
October 6th: Film screening: Behemoth by  Zhao Liang (CH)
October 8th: Book launch: Against the Grain


The exhibition is supported by the City of Aarhus, Novo Nordisk Fonden, Nordea Foundation, Knud Højgaards Fond, and the Danish Art Foundation.