Danish Nina Beier and American John Miller have created a new work that transforms the underground Salling Gallery into a complex universe where the boundaries between human and object, portrait and person, original and reproduction shift. Their thought-provoking total installation revolves around identity, authenticity and representation.

As you enter the exhibition, you are greeted by a large number of staged mannequins standing face to face with photographs of portrait paintings unearthed from forgotten archives. A strange space emerges – both familiar and strange. The figures appear neither quite as people nor as objects, and there is a jumble of mutual glances between the mannequins, the portraits and the audience.

The exhibition explores the cultural codes and structures that shape our contemporary world, moving between portraiture tradition, consumer culture and the hierarchies embedded in the gaze. The Populace is at once intimate and alienating, personal and generic. The work leaves a space where originality and copy are displaced, and where seeing and being seen are negotiated.

Curated by Signe Melgaard Mark.

Courtesy ARoS Museum, copyright David Stjernholm
Photos: David Stjernholm

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