The fifteenth of January 2009 Sisi moved. From Copenhagen to Santiago de Chile. One month and five days before, on the tenth of December 2008, Sisi attended an art event in Copenhagen and got photographed by the local “talk of the town” art organ, Kopenhagen.dk. One month and 25 days later, on the 12th of March 2009, Sisi got photographed by the major Chilean newspaper El Mercurio at an art opening.
Sisi in Copenhagen, Denmark
Sisi in Santiago, Chile
In Denmark the local newspapers do not have pages of “who went to what opening” paid by the hosting exhibition/gallery space. In Chile the local art scenes do not have homepages with small talk photography, interviews and a weekly calendar made primarily by young volunteers.
K, a friend and artist of Sisi, recently moved from Copenhagen to Beirut. When flickering through a kopenhagen.dk “small talk” with photographs from an opening in Copenhagen she felt ambiguous; on the one hand she couldn’t see herself in a Copenhagen art scene setting, on the other hand she felt anxious from being deleted from the Copenhagen “picture,” from her root. Looking through these photographs of a Copenhagen art life evoked a feeling of rootlessness. In what image did she belong?
Are belonging, photographs and imaginary images connected? If they are, how is one’s belonging related to art scenes and their economical structure of visually choosing, photographing and displaying the people of this art scene? How does one engage with art scenes and their visual gossip organs, whether being private, state and volunteer funded or being capitalistic and neoliberal?
