Miriam Kongstad (*1991, DK)
HARD PLAY, 2024, Performance, 45 min
Children’s games are usually perceived as harmless and innocent. However, as gender studies has taught us, play is also crucially important to our processes of socialisation and for the construction of the self-image and values we take with us into adulthood. HARD PLAY (2024) is a choreographic analysis of a variety of children’s games. The performance work explores how we are taught to perform gender identities and social norms from an early age. In the work, fragments of children’s games are connected by a central prop: a 1.5-metre-long braid attached to the artist’s hair. The braid is transformed in terms of usage throughout the performance, serving variously as fairy-tale princess hair, dog leash, lasso, rope and whip, all while we delve further into a world of joy, imagination and terror. Miriam Kongstad’s practice often revolves around the interaction between body and society. In her works she articulates ambiguous and complicated aspects of existence: health, sexuality, pain and desire, and she explores the human body as a metaphysical, organic, social and spiritual entity. In the historical Futurist movement, gender was a central theme and topic for discussion right from the outset. In response to the anti-feminism in F. T. Marinetti’s
“The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” (“Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo”, 1909) a group of female artists including Valentine de Saint-Point, Rosa Rosà, Enif Robert and Futurluce works during the 1910’s to articulate a feminist Futurism
. They paint a more nuanced picture of Futurism’s gender struggle and openness to new gender definitions.
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ABOUT MIRIAM KONGSTAD (DK)
Miriam Kongstad (DK, 1991) is an artist based in Berlin and Copenhagen. Originally educated as a choreographer from Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin (HZT), she subsequently completed an MFA in fine arts from the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2020. Materialized as images, performance, sculpture, text, and sound, Kongstad’s practice is anchored in explorations of embodiment, identity, and social codes. Through depictions of cultural and political structures, she analyses the interplay between bodies and society. By articulating often ambivalent and complex aspects of life, such as health, sexuality, pain, and desire, the human body is explored as a metaphysical, organic, social, and spiritual entity – an expanded experience of being flesh. Miriam Kongstad has exhibited and performed internationally, including the National Gallery of Denmark (DK), Glyptoteket (DK), Centre Pompidou (FR), Bergen Kunsthall (NO), Het HEM (NL), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (DK), KØS – Museum of Art in Public Spaces (DK), Kunsthal Aarhus (DK), MMAG Foundation (JO), Fundación Botín (ES), Hamburger Bahnhof (DE), PPL (USA) and Sophiensaele (DE). In 2022 and 2023, Kongstad’s works were acquired by the National Gallery of Denmark, New Carlsberg Foundation, and the Danish Arts Foundation, among others.
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ARTIFICIAL OPTIMISM PERFORMANCE PROGRAM
Artificial Optimism is an exhibition about the resonances of futurism in contemporary art, which can be experienced at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning from Aug. 24th – Oct. 27th 2024. During the exhibition period, performances and concerts by the exhibiting artists will be regularly held. Performance was central to futurism and the program is inspired by the evenings and afternoons that the futurists held between 1909 and 1914, where they presented combinations of readings, sound art, happenings, etc. Participation in the performance program is free when the ticket to the exhibition has been paid.
The exhibition’s performance program has been developed under the auspices of Toaster, a collaboration between Husets Teater and Den Frie.
