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Denmark

HEREDITY AND IDENTITY

To know who we are, and what makes us what we are, are queries that most of us have.

“My paternal grandfather, Ludwig Andreas Hansen, was Danish, from the island of Bornholm.“

Lys Hansen recognised a strong influence from this part of her heritage, and has potent affinities with it. Central themes of her work address identity and heritage. She has presented major exhibitions encapsulating these.

THE NEW FACE is a tribute to modern Danish design and glass-blowing, and marking the Millennium. The clarity of the composition and the concise selection of colour reflect the characteristics of modern Danish design and specifically of glass. The notion is of a new face for contemporary aspects of Denmark, and hence of identity.

Mette Bligaard has incisively described it:

“…a view of the present…a modern image. It offers a large head-shaped form that is reminiscent of the glass- blower’s coloured molten bulb. The starting point is a little faceless head. Here, as well, the subject is identity and continuity. The new individual is Janus-faced, looking backwards and forwards at the same time.”

THE SACRIFICE alludes to the Danish past history and customs but merges into disturbing aspects of the present. The sacrificed Iron Age maiden has become an Amazon warrior, the skeletal remains re-charged with helmet/skull, the scalp transformed into a blaze of flames or a shaven punk-head. It evokes Seamus Heaney’s “Bog Queen”.

lmage: The New Face

<em>Other Directions</em>
<em>Seriously Red (Read)</em> (diptych). 2007, oil, 203x306cm.
<em>The New Face</em>. 1998, oil, 203x178cm.
<em>The Sacrifice</em>. 1998, oil, 203x178cm.
<em>Bornholm Spring Love</em>
<em>Breaking Waters</em>
<em>O, The Red and Blue of It</em>
<em>Red Sea and Rocks, Bornholm DK</em>
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