She was hidden, I know that much.

In the beginning time the institutions that housed her shimmered; fine dining and tiny muscles to shuck. Pearl encrusted lobster picks. Her casing was the clatter of cutlery. Bright white table cloths in the shape of an hour; curves of whalebone covering her rushing sands; roseate hue cheeks and enamel shined skin etc. Her obedience to these graces built a shape for her, shell-like.

At dinner, under tall ceilings, the sentience of ancient creatures coated her digestive tract and oesophagus, soft glowing and gold like knowledge. Hors d'oeuvre for the well kept in a hotel called sanity:

Numbered rooms suitcases individually wrapped hand-soaps napkin rings
A world measured in the ordered divides we name politeness. Internal and tied up.

Place wandered, rings expanded: envelopes meant intrigue. She misunderstood. She wrote on the outsides. She was given an inch and she made a body.

Her emboldened sights became sculptures, large and civic, and in their permanence undid her.

For the city, she cast the flesh of women in what can withstand the rain. She queried what an edge was and opened up her shell, letting the water in. Lobster picks on the ceiling, broken crockery, pearls dislodged. History flooded and was changed.

In horror or punishment the institutions shifted form. Corridors drew the perimeters of a landscape called Edge of The World. They called her what they call all women who get to know. She was mad and her shell did not shimmer but stank. Chasity and doors are what she’d been given, as if a room sufficed as a cork for the girl-brain. But she had her own limits, our salty rebel: veins filled with molluscs, two eyes condensed to one, skin misgiving. Her thirty two teeth became a single bargaining tool for sisterhood. She left the hotel and took to the sea, emboldened by the vastness.

In the depths of her outlawed mind she turned her cage into a suit of armour; swamped the shell that housed her and spun it into bone. Madness wasn’t a name she could take. She wrote on the outside of envelopes. A life of containers misread.

It was there she stayed. Submerged. Drawing in tongues from the depths. Shaken from the history of her kin.

Text by Hannah Regel

Hun var gemt, så meget vidste jeg.

I begyndelsen skinnede de institutioner, hun boede i; gourmetmåltider og bittesmå muslinger, man kunne afskalle. Perlebesatte hummergafler. Hun var indkapslet i en raslen af bestik. Skinnende hvide duge formet som en time; kurvede hvalknogler dækkede hendes flyvesand; rosa kinder og emaljeret hud etc. Hun føjede sig for al denne velvilje og det dannede en form om hende, skalagtig.

Under middagen, under høje lofter, blev hendes fordøjelsessystem og spiserør belagt med et ældgammelt dyrs sanselighed, svagt skinnende og gyldent som viden. Hors d’oeuvres for de velforvarede i et hotel ved navn fornuft: Nummererede rum kufferter små indpakkede håndsæber servietringe.

En verden udmålt i de ordnede mellemrum, vi kalder høflighed. Indre og bundne.

Stederne vandrede, ringe udvidede sig: konvolutter betød intrige. Hun misforstod. Hun skrev på ydersiden. Hun blev givet en lillefinger og skabte en krop.

Hendes modige syner blev til skulpturer, store og kommunale, og deres varighed åbnede hende. Til byen støbte hun kvindekød i materialer, som kunne tåle regnen. Hun spurgte til, hvad en kant var og åbnede sin skal, lod vandet flyde ind. Hummergafler i loftet, ituslået porcelæn, løsnede perler. Historien blev oversvømmet og forandredes.

Skrækslagne eller straffede skiftede institutionerne form. Lange gange optegnede de yderste grænser for Verdens Ende. De kaldte hende det man kalder alle kvinder som ved. Hun var gal og hendes skal skinnede ikke, den sank. Det, hun havde fået, var kyskhed og døre, som om et værelse rakte til at være en prop i pigehjernen. Men hun havde sine egne grænser, vores salte rebel: årerne fyldtes af bløddyr, to øjne kondenseredes til ét, huden bekymrede sig. Hun ville være medsøster og hendes toogtredive tænder var det eneste, hun havde at forhandle med. Hun forlod hotellet til fordel for havet, blev modig af dets dybde.

I hendes fredløse tankers dyb lavede hun sit bur om til en rustning; oversvømmede sin skal og spandt den til knogle. Gal var ikke et navn, hun kunne leve med. Hun skrev på ydersiden af konvolutter. Et liv af misforståede beholdere.

Der blev hun. Under vand. Tegnede i tunger fra dybet. Rystet løs fra sin familiehistorie.

Tekst af Hannah Regel
Oversat af Ida Holmegaard

The exhibition is generously supported by Ragnvald og Ida Blix’s Legat. Photos by Per Andersen.