Current research

In 2021, a shell wall on the 9th floor of Copenhagen City Hall Tower was taken down and revealed a collection of polychrome plaster sculptures and reliefs. Beneath a thick layer of dust, gilded surfaces glinted on coats of arms, in lions’ manes, wild men’s beards, and in the hair of the god Hymenaios. The thick layer of dust and the inscription “1970” painted on the reverse side of a panel from the shell wall indicated that the sculpture group had been moved to the space behind it prior to a renovation of the tower in the 1970s. Old records soon revealed that the sculpture group was comissioned of sculptor Vilhelm Bissen's workshop in for a temporary triumphal arch, erected by the Municipality of Copenhagen in Højbro Plads to celebrate the golden wedding of King Christian IX and Queen Louise on 26 May 1892. The preliminary survey of the sculpture group also uncovered numerous physical traces of an eventful existence in the form of graffiti, touch wear, fragmentation, and previous repair attempts.

In my PhD project, From Gold to Oblivion and Back Again, I use this case and its entanglements and transformations as a starting point to challenge the traditional perception of public sculpture and monuments as static and stable objects. My hypothesis is that public monuments and sculptures are fundamentally unstable and dynamic phenomena, which are continuously changed and renegotiated through interactions with and interventions by people, institutions, and natural elements.

My PhD project is affiliated with the research project Moving Monuments: The Material Lives of Sculptures from the Danish Colonial Era and the Museum of Copenhagen. The project is financed by The New Carlsberg Foundation.