Through artist Barbara Amalie Skovmand Thomsens practice, which incorporates installation, video, photography, poetry, and performance, she seeks tactile ways to express a sense of cohesion, a belonging to the world. Barbara has exhibited at de Appel, de Service Garage, &Foam, W139 and FATFORM in Amsterdam and Forårsudstillingen in Copenhagen.
tilbarbara@gmail.comLiquid Love
Every Couple is an Island, every Man is a Universe
HD Video
9'32"
Sound
2013
Liquid Love
Every Couple is an Island, every Man is a Universe
HD Video
9'32"
Sound
2013
Liquid Love shows two lovers’ fruit-eating interaction with each other in a Still-Life setting. The work is based on a rewrite of the myth ‘The fall of man’ in which the lovers are aware of their (sinful) act but nevertheless continues to experience eternal passion in the Garden of Eden. Never expelled? Never suffering? As here, my videos are typically without spoken or written words, they communicate through atmosphere and tactility.
The video is my response to a commission, the exhibition ‘The Path of Suffering’, an art route in de Baarsjes, Amsterdam opening 13th of February 2013.
Excerpt
0'21" until 0'50"
The Law of Symmetry
HD Video
5'08"
Sound
2012
The Law of Symmetry
HD Video
5'08"
Sound
2012
The Law of Symmetry is a site-specific video. It was exhibited at the same place as it was recorded, at ‘&Foam', and based on the history of this building: once it was a major bank. The camera travels through the building and its hidden backspaces. Here is being revealed the story of a breadbank laden with subliminal symbolism of cohesion and perfection. The Law of Symmetry was created on the basis of an invitation to make a new work during a 14 days residency at ‘&Foam’ culminating in the exhibition PLOT at the location &Foam, Amsterdam.
ACTORS
Twin one ... Casper Koster
Twin one ... Floyd Koster
Homeless ... André Avelas
Homeless ... Bonno van Doorn
Homeless ... Manuel Klappe
Musician ... Peter Schuyff
DIRECTOR
Barbara Amalie Skovmand Thomsen
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Chris Rudz
SECOND CAMERA
Andrzej Rudz
STILL PHOTOGRAPHY
Ayako Nishibori
SOUND
Julien Debey
EDIT AND GRADING
Matthijs Diederiks
MUSIC
‘Ursula Peterson’ by Peter Schuyff
A SPECIAL THANKS TO
Erwan van Buuren, Albert Hofman, Frank Schaafsma, Monica Tormell, Pilou Verwiel, Echte Bakker Groothuis, Joost van de Wiel from het Ceraal, and Martijn Weijens & Yvette Steehouwer from Brezel Lunchroom
Watercolours
C-print
70 × 100 cm
2011
A special thanks to Ulla Eriksen
Inside my Body is Water Inside my Body are Mountains
HD Video
2'36"
Sound
2010
Inside my Body is Water Inside my Body are Mountains
HD Video
2'36"
Sound
2010
The video ’Inside My Body Is Water Inside My Body Are Mountains’ reflects upon the force of creation. How does things come into life? Here an alchemist is attempting to reproduce the Creation in an experiment with gelatine. The alchemist is a young woman. She sits at a brightly lit table in a basement with a dark mound of jelly before her. The jelly, the woman, and the camera are shaking. She divides the mountain into two sections, releasing a shining blue colour.
ACTRESS
Woman ... Barbara Amalie Skovmand Thomsen
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Ben Geraerts
DIRECTOR’S ASSISTANT
Ulla Eriksen
SOUND
Niels Kristian Eriksen
There Are Two In A Couple
Super 8 transferred to video
1'49"
Sound
2011
There Are Two In A Couple
Super 8 transferred to video
1'49"
Sound
2011
This video is a continuation of an older work, the postcard We Are Between You and Me (III) and again features my parents, whom I glued together once more, now outside on a cold winter’s day. It is a short clip, a close-up on their faces. They move jointly. The skin stretches between their cheeks; their eyes pull down and reveal that they are glued together. The soundscape consists solely of the ocean and its breaking waves.
A SPECIAL THANKS TO
Anne Marie Johanne Gustavsen & Jens Christian Thomsen
Here a photo from when the video was shown as part of the mixed-media installation You Are The Point of Departure at the exhibition Paradise Lost Paradise, (2July-28August2011), Kortrijk in Belgium.
The video also takes part of the installation Oh, come a little closer / The Great Pineapple Show as seen on this exhibition photo from Service Show, (8 August - 17 August 2011) at de Service Garage, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
It’s always darkest before dawn and brightest before twilight
Mixed-media installation with 2-channel video
15’25”
Sound
2012
It’s always darkest before dawn and brightest before twilight
Mixed-media installation with 2-channel video
15'25"
Sound
2012
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Ben Geraerts
SOUND
Niels Eriksen
THANK YOU
Alicja Bielawska, Justin Gosker, Silvia Ulloa Marquez, and Steven Alexander Bos
The 2-channel video installation is part of the mixed-media installation It is always darkest before dawn and brightest before twilight, which I presented at the exhibition ‘The Island’, FATFORM, Amsterdam 2012.
Outside the door to the space where the installation was located, I placed my own version of an Indian fertility symbol: coconuts, African potatoes and rock crystals wrapped in coloured yarn. Inside the space is a landscape of mint-coloured salt, which meanders like a mountain range between two video projections. One projection shows a barren, slowly wavering landscape – perhaps a desert or a volcanic phenomenon. The sun is quickly rising and setting on the horizon. Upon closer inspection, the viewer might notice that the landscape is made of dough and flour. Opposite the ‘desert’, the other video projection shows trembling blue jelly mountains. A mountaintop violently breaks off, the shaking subsides, and snow starts to fall, creating a vacuum in the soundscape. The landscapes in the videos are paradoxically deserted and animated at the same time. Nature here is man-made, without vegetation, without man himself, but having what we recognize to be sensual human-like movements. The work becomes an effort to bring the human/man-made, and the natural world into dialogue.
I
HEART AT HOME
Mixed media installation
Teto Projects, Amsterdam
2010
Sugarsun Honeymoon
I
HEART AT HOME
Mixed media installation
Teto Projects, Amsterdam
2010
HOSTS AT THE OPENING
Sophie van der Burg & Nikolai van der Burg
A SPECIAL THANKS TO
Hercules Goulart Martins (Teto Projects)
The installation was installed in the kitchen at TeTo Projects, Amsterdam, a residential apartment, used as project space, for the exhibition DEMOB HAPPY curated by Alex Farrar. The viewer experienced a surreal kitchen interior where salt was staged as a mint coloured pyramid- shaped desert blocking the sink. Two circles of honey and purple coloured sugar were painted on the windows facing the garden. A costumed couple who were serving as hosts during the vernissage activated the installation. They squeezed a pile of blood oranges, which were served as drinks, and washed clothes so that the blue jelly-mountains trembled on the washing machine where they were placed. The intention was to open up the potential of the kitchen space by miming nature phenomena in a smaller, household, scale set in motion by performers
I
LONGING
Honey performance as part of a mixed-media installation
Kunstvlaai, Amsterdam
2010
Sugarsun Honeymoon
II
LONGING
Honey performance as part of a mixed-media installation
Kunstvlaai, Amsterdam
2010
Honey woman ... Sophie van der Burg
PHOTOGRAPHS
Ayako Nishibori
A girl dressed in yellow pours honey from her jar into the hole of a furry rug. This action was part of a larger mixed-media installation in which the fiction of a couple, Sugar Sun and Honey Moon, unfolded at Kunstvlaai 2010, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Sugar Moon
Mixed media installation
Detail view
2010
Sugar Moon
Mixed media installation
2010
The Sugar Moon was made on the window of a high building, hanging above the city. It was part of a larger installation in which I displayed a series of Postcards From The Universe and an audio piece of played crystal glasses. The spectator was invited to take a set of headphones, listening to the sound of the crystal glasses while looking out through the sugar moon at the cityscape. I was investigating interventions as mechanisms for more magical cityscapes.
Postcards from the universe
Love Is A Greyscale Between Two Poles
Postcard Series
Collage
Various sizes
since 2009, on-going
2009
Zonneafscheid
2010
Boschstudie
2009
Measuring Heights
2010
Switzerland 1971
2013
Can’t wait to see you here
Book
11 × 17 cm
2010
Can't wait to see you here
Book
11 × 17 cm
2010
The book is collaboration between Ulla Eriksen, the Polish artist Alicja Bielawska and me. It contains collages, drawings and photographs, and may qua design be opened differently and this way gives the reader many different possible combinations of the illustrations of the book. Layout and design is made in collaboration with graphic designer Rikke Vagner. The book also contains a story of Anders Mogensen.
Under Vand
Performance concert
12-20'
Sound
2018
Badesøen festival by The Lake radio, Albertslund, DK.
Photo: Thanks to Kim Matthäi Leland
Performance concert as one giant oyster performing on sheet metal.
Duo: Barbara & Marie-Louise,
Barbara Amalie Skovmand Thomsen
and Marie-Louise Andersson