Olivia Rode Hvass‘ exhibition Memory Drip is a total installation of woven landscapes, where digital image files are transformed into textile patterns and codes. Like magnificent tapestries that form portals between past and present, where mythological stories are woven together with questions of power, conquest and man’s relationship to land and nature. With the loom as a tool, Rode Hvass’ threads, patterns and codes create a story of cohesion and care in a fragmented world.

In Memory Drip we get to know both the horse and the digital fabric, not just as animals and technology, but as unlikely kinships – guides, mirrors and companions. The horse as a motif and figure is the common thread in Rode Hvass’ works, where it flows between worlds, as a metaphor for the encounter between the present and history, between the earthly and the supernatural.

The works in the exhibition draw threads from the historical tapestry series La Chasse à la licorne from the 16th century, which depicts mystical medieval fantasies about unicorn hunting. The symbolic meaning of the unicorn is far-reaching. In the unicorn hunt, it has historically represented the human desire to own, categorize and exploit. It symbolizes the magical, the foreign, the uncontrollable, the wild and the free – and is today seen, for example, as a favorite queer symbol in internet cultures. Where La Chasse á la Licorne celebrates the hunt for the unicorn as a triumph, Rode Hvass questions the messages of hijacking and power as success, and explores the violence that is in the tales of unicorn hunting. In the weavings, the landscapes are abandoned, the rich hunting grounds are strewn with withered hay, and the mythical unicorn has changed form into an earthy horse without horns.

In Memory Drip, Rode Hvass draws myths and history into the present, and asks whether one can break with apathy and loneliness in times of crisis, when caring communities are necessary, but have difficult conditions in our individualized production society?

Opening: April 12th at 5pm

Exhibition period: April 12th – April 23rd

Opening hours: Every day 10am – 6pm

Four Boxes Gallery is an exhibition space at Krabbesholm High School. Memory Drip is curated by Rebekka Laugesen.