There is a Lovely Land
Mixed media installation
Localities - My World Images Festival
With Doing it for Daddy
2010
Out of Denmark
Featuring Bettina Malcomess, Linda Stupart and Renee Holleman
2010
In 2010, Doing it For Daddy was invited by Senegalese curator N’Gone Fall, to participate in an exhibition in Denmark entitled 'Localities, Fictional and Real’, as part of the ‘My World Images Festival’.
On receiving the invitation, we asked ourselves the question: 'What do We Know about Denmark?' Realising we knew very little about Denmark, we began to consider what the Danes might know about Africa. We had no idea.
Using an anthropological framework Doing for Daddy decided to try 'discover' Denmark from an inherently local South African perspective by watching YouTube videos of vikings, cooking traditional Danish meals in Cape Town, interviewing Danish anthropologists, wandering flea markets, and when in Denmark joining a Zoo Safari expedition and visiting the Karen Blixen Museum among other endeavors.
'There is a Lovely Land' takes its title from the Danish National Anthem, and attempts to make visible the mechanisms of the colonial gaze, and the ever-complicated relationship between Europe and Africa through the role of bold artist/explorer trying to come to grips with the realities and fictions of their own locality, through the dislocation of traveling to a place completely foreign, and Other, to our own.