Berit Heggenhougen-Jensen, was born in Copenhagen in 1956. She attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (1978–1983 and 1989–1990) and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1999–2004), emerging onto the art scene at a crucial moment of reorientation.
As an active part of a groundbreaking generation, Heggenhougen-Jensen erupted onto the contemporary Danish art scene with the 1982 group exhibition The Knife on the Head, which is now associated with the foundation of Denmark’s own ‘Young Wild Ones’, inspired by the eponymous German movement of a few years previously.
Within the particular unorthodox conceptual school she emerged from, Heggenhougen-Jensen has carved out her own niche through mastering ironic distancing, which acts a powerful form of liberation. Overall, her oeuvre is one of unity, but is achieved mainly by highlighting the kinship and symbiosis that is missing.
Various motifs and subjects have punctuated her work throughout the years. Native American culture imparted its vibrant colours to a quest for materiality in the 1980s. These figures were followed by idyllic landscapes. The timeless genre of landscape reappears in the 1990s, although eerier and strangely symbolic.
Recently, a less tangible element has entered the fray: the unconscious. Specifically, and in the artist’s own words, the unconscious’s ‘utterance and its place in that we call democracy; in historical, etymological, and social terms, as well as culturally and politically’. This need stems from a very simple observation; much is known of the conscious, much less of its counterpart. Is it being deliberately neglected or set aside? Berit Heggenhougen-Jensen seeks to answer these very questions.
