Gardening is Activism I:

The first Gardening is Activism pilot project and a collaboration with the artistic platform Til Vægs and public housing association AKB Lundtoftegade with 2000 residents of 40 nationalities at the vibrant multi-ethnic area of Nørrebro in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Taking place over many years in a co-creative process as a learning community and a social, living sculpture (or common), we will re-design a cut grass area with existing mature trees into an anti-racist multicultural forest garden, decolonising not only permaculture and biology, but also culture by applying permaculture processes, holistic principles, radical time perspectives like thinking 7 generations ahead and core ethics of earth care, people care and fair share/future care.

I also work together with Eva Max Andersen from Immergrün, FRAK, Permaculture Denmark, Naturplanteskolen, Christian Lykou from Pædagogisk Praktisk Permakultur and many others for co-creative, community building practices within projects, stacking social bonds, function, diversity and ecosystems building with care and community.

Kindly supported by the Danish Arts Council, AKB Lundtoftegade, Copenhagen Municipality Biodiversity puljen, Nordea Fonden Her gror vi, Det Obelske Familiefond, Dreyer Fonden, Hosting Lands og Bikubenfonden and others.

Get updates at: Skovhavelunden

First installed in my garden 2021 during covid-19 lock down. Was a duo exhibition at C4 Projects in Copenhagen with Rickard Eklund. Curated by Luise Sejersen in the exhibition series “Postsecular Reflections”.

When I had my first son, I took a DNA test. Since I am adopted, I wanted to know for sure what I would pass on. It showed I was primarily of korean descent with a significant high percentage japanese. Knowing Koreas bloody past with Japan, it wasn’t joy at first sight. When I had visited wooden buddhist temples, signs always said “..burned down by the japanese, restored in..”. Every cultural trait had been attempted wiped out in a massive, colonial wave of violence. And this violence was right there, present in my body. Of course, the landscape, the oceans and even the gut itself don’t mind these emotional, collective wounds, they bleed into new territories like slow liquid.

Somewhere, in the past, among those islands that would become Japan, an enzyme from a marine bacteria called Zobellia galactanivorans found its way into the genome of the human stomach bacteria B. plebeius. An enzyme that had a profound ability to derive nutrients from red algae, also known as nori seaweed. As if the ocean had crawled right into the human gut, it is also said that people in the past used to study the whales; when they gave birth, they would eat great amounts of seaweed to nurse their calves. In Korea that led to the traditional seaweed soup miyeok-guk, a dish always made for new mothers.

Recipe
dried wakame seaweed
soy sauce
minced garlic
sesame oil

Soak. Rinse. Fry. Soak. Stir. Season.


Installation: household glassware, mouthblown glass, kombucha and scobys, 4 kinds of seaweed.

Article in IDOART:

https://www.idoart.dk/blog/artmaking-in-a-global-climate-crisis

Artist collective 2004 - 2010

UFOlab = Unidentified Foreign Object Laboratory

Introduction written collectively by UFOlab for Art as Forum: Forum Lecture #20 at Copenhagen University, March 2023

To even be able to start to talk about art, self-organization, friendly activism, and adoption one must bring up the history of the global phenomenon of transracial and transnational adoption and how the Northern European countries are among the principal receiving/trafficking countries of adoptees per capita in the world.

One must also take into account that when UFOlab was founded in 2004 it was during a time when BIPOC artists often worked alone or in relative isolation from peers because of geographical distances and/or expectations to assimilate to prevailing values, behaviours and attitudes in the art world and broader society. It was before social media made it easy to find and connect with other BIPOC artists and when art institutions could easily bypass the individual BIPOC artist and diminish the ‘adoptee artist’ for being either self-indulgent, ‘identitarian’, angry or unthankful. It was however more difficult to ignore a strong collective formation.

It was within this context that UFOlab became one of Scandinavia’s first East Asian diaspora and women artist groups of colour. There was no precedent in Scandinavia for East Asian diaspora artists to connect and organise together as an artist collective.

As a unified entity, UFOlab could speak from a multi-voiced platform. Thematically, through their collective art practice, they made public interventions that contested and re-framed normative perceptions of racism and transnational adoption from a post -and decolonial feminist viewpoint.

During the years when UFOlab was active, the group produced exhibitions, talks, events, performances as well as public interventions. Twisting everyday situations, norms and expectations and highlighting structural hierarchies, the group made visible prevalent prejudices and stereotypes.

UFOlab was primarily active in Denmark and South Korea but through their collaborations and outreach, they connected with a global network of cultural workers, activists and researchers who contested official narratives around transnational adoption by adoption agencies, sending and receiving countries, working instead towards adoptee rights and nuancing the discourse around transnational adoption and its complex global history tied to war, militarism, white privilege, patriarchy, and class.

About UFOlab

UFOlab [Unidentified Foreign Object Laboratory]
Active during the years 2004–2010. The group consisted of five artists: Anna Jin Hwa Borstam, raised in Sweden, and Charlotte Kim Boed, Trine Mee Sook Gleerup, Jane Jin Kaisen and Skye Jin (formerly Jette Hye Jin Mortensen), raised in Denmark. All are adopted from South Korea.

Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art (2013)
Copper tube, white fabric, indigo blue fabric, wooden framed images/photos, 7 channel video b/w with sound, videoprojection color no sound, surroundsound, spotlights, indigo blue carpet, platforms with felt and low frequency sound.

The Apology was awarded the Aage and Yelva Nimb Foundation Honorary Award

Update: after almost 10 years of being cancelled and experiencing backlash, the community of korean adoptees investigating critically the holistic implications of transnational adoption have experienced a tremendous breakthrough, coming from the Danish adoption debate led by artists, writers and activists for almost twenty years now:
South Korea’s truth commission to investigate dozens of foreign adoptions . Other European national investigations have been processed or are underway, documenting illegal adoption practices and from 2023 the Danish government is also officially investigating South Korean adoptions from the 1970s-1980s.

Description:
With a starting point in Gordon Browns official apology to the Home Childen in 2010, a historical child migration scheme rooted deeply in colonialism and racism, I draw a link to critical examinations of modern day transnational adoption as human trade, unrecognized generational trauma and healing matter, transforming Overgaden into a literally groundbreaking healing space of reparation and care, art & natural science and ancient empowerment rituals. The 4 blade phurba knife held by me, is traditionally used to indicate a center for a new world or beginning. I use the many-blade knife to connect pain, self harm, the popular image of female vengeance and sand calligraphy with healing and the power to write your own history. In constructive, sensory ways, I want to unveil a silent pain, that traditionally has been a personal psychology, but is in fact a collective experience of loss, despair and rootless shadow existence.

Solo exhibition in 3 parts:
Healing - Method - Archive

Healing
Healing space with indigo blue carpet and large curtain of sheer indigo blue fabric hanging in a diagonal line that ends in a fibonacci spiral with a spotlight in the middle and a soundscape composed by Eyvind Gulbrandsen with healing properties, playing in randomized patterns. Walking in spirals have from ancient times been practiced in many cultures as a magic ritual of reconnecting ourselves to the universe and celestial patterns and energy flows. Two circular platforms to sit on with soft, indigo wool and low frequency sound, that absorbs into the body while seated, mirroring each other on both sides of a video projection of the artist in a performance of ancient exercises to transform self harm, anxiety and sorrow to scientific discovery, movement and new beginnings with a tibetan phurba knife and ayurvedic shirodara meditation. The internalized, gaslighting from being defined by a prison of stories from unequal power balances is slowly washed away and new, fresh skin and emotions can appear to the world.

Method
A framed image, the same length as the artist when she was adopted to Denmark and the name tag and number she had around her arm. The framed email from her first father, when they finally regained contact after 25 years of separation. Here he explains how she was taken away without his knowledge and how he searched for her all these years. Three framed images: 1. the element of CU (copper), having properties of energy and oxygen flow in the body. Used as a main construction material in the installations and the main spine in the mapping of the art project (see poster). 2. 108 day transition experiment making meditiative Indigo blue dots, the color Indigo blue having wavelengths that stimulate the pineal gland and melatonin production in the brain, and the ability to relax and sleep. 3. DNA, the body, and introducing epigenetics and inherited trauma, our past and our hidden ancestral connections as an internal, dizzying scale of intentions and experiences that are working through us and our nervous systems, bodies and tendencies. 4. A framed scan of a traumatized brain.

Archive
On a diagonal line of copper hangs a transparent, white curtain covering an archive of metallic shelves with projectors displaying moving text from files from the British Home Children scheme, media clips with sound from Korean adoptees trying to find family and African first parents telling about theft of their children, rare footage of controversial and violent Attachment Therapy sessions used by some adoption families and movie excerpts from Oranges and Sunshine, portraying the unravelling of the unethical Home Children scheme and the actual footage of British prime minister Gordon Brown making an official appology to the Home Childen. Underlying colonial politics, journalistic findings, dates and notes from research and drawn on the walls in circular mandalas with a mixture of black ink and the artist´s blood. The sound in the room is a cacophony of voices, stories, cries.

During the exhibition period at Overgaden, there was a performance by writer Maja Lee Langvad with excerpts from her book She Is Angry (A Personal account of transnational adoption) as well as a panel debate with the artist and researchers Lene Myong and Rikke Andreassen and a screening of the movies Oranges and Sunshine by Kim Loach and Resilience by Tammy Chu.

Credits
Sound composition: Eyvind Gulbrandsen
Video: Producer – Claudia Saginario; Filmphotography – Catherine Pattinama Coleman; Editor – Linda Man

Warm Thanks to
Tijana Miskovic, Louise Hansen, Filmgear, Ribka Pattinama Coleman, Timme Hovind, Danny Bertz Sørensen, Mikkel Friis-Møller, Line Lyhne, Maja Lee Langvad, Kim Stoker, Lasse Kjederqvist, Tammy Chu, Jim Loach, Lene Myong, Dorrit Saietz, Rikke Andreasen, Jim Karlsen.

Sponsors
KVADRAT
Dynaudio
Interface

Supported by The Danish Arts Council

🇰🇷 한국어

First exhibited at Sculpture Triennial Odense 14 in 2014.
Installation: polyester organza, iron structure, underwater lighting, speakers and sound.
Performance 3 singers, costumes in organza, music partiture. Duration: 30 minutes.

Photos: Timme Hovind / Jan Søndergaard

Text by Charlotte Sprogøe

“Human reproduction, creation and identity have been the central factors in a number of Jette Hye Jin Mortensen´s works. This time her examinations are placed in a futuristic scenario where choir voices in the trees of Munke Mose and lights under the surface of the lake create an out-of-this-world, timeless sci-fi atmosphere. The sculpture has been created specifically for the park, the choral work is presented by the Funen Opera and the score Lux Aeterna / Eternal Light has been rewritten for this work by composer Eyvind Gulbrandsen in co-operation with the artist. The collaboration with external working partners and the interaction with their practise is a recurrent theme in her works, which often focus on how to challenge your self as an artist. The result aims at creating something, which is not constructed and controlled by the artist, but instead made out of the reflections and actions of the process. Spirituality, weightlessness and performativity are all key elements in Hye Jin Mortensen´s practice. In other works concrete cultural questions of identity have been in focus, but in this etheral and almost immaterial work it is the very creation of life, which is the main topic. In the lyrics we hear references to questions of donor and insemination issues, which might be an even bigger debate issue in the future. “

The Funen Opera will presented a live performance of the work in Munke Mose on August 30, 2014.

Production:
Costumedesign: Anne Werner
Tailoring: Ane Rønne & Sten Martin Jonsson
Iron construction and soundinstallation: Eyvind Gulbrandsen
Technical drawings and loudspeaker system: Mikkel Friis-Møller
Composition and sound: Eyvind Gulbrandsen
Singers:
David Kragh Sørensen
Emma Oemann
Michelle Nora Lind
Simon Mott Madsen

Text excerpts: Charis Thompson "Making Parents, The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies"

Subtitle: Miss Jin & The Unwed Mothers

First exhibited in Kring Art Space, Seoul, South Korea and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark, in 2010.

Video/8 channel videoinstallation/conceptual project

The title stems from an anthropological saying: tell it the way they tell it, in order to think as a culture or people under study. The subtitle have the concept of merging the musicvideo and the ever growing K-pop industry in South Korea with the national trauma of exporting 200.000+ of its infant citizens away for adoption and breaking family bonds. I was invited to an exhibition with a clear expectation from the curators side, that I would fill out a specific (minority) identity with my work as a korean adoptee. To play with this peculiar stamp, I chose to confuse the usual production hierarchy and subvert the gazes . I wrote a performative concept for the project and found a diverse group of professionals to work with. In a sociocratic process with collective mindfulness meditations, the whole team consisting of a filmdirector, camera crew, lighting, designer and makeup, dancers and the curator had final say on all details regarding their fields and hands-on work, in dialogue with me. The crew were mostly from Denmark and found most of their money-jobs within theatre, film, commercials, music videos and fashion, which also shines through. The production was in itself not unusual from other medium-to-big art productions: a team effort of ideas, effort and knowledge with the artist on top as a brand or identifier of the work. The initial idea which consisted of a storyline around unwed korean mothers, attachment and loss is somewhat still there although filtered and intepreted through this collective gaze of a danish cultural production team.

Video: 15:00 min. / Production year: 2009

Artist/vocals/edit: Jette Hye Jin Mortensen
Director: Niels Kjær Olsen
Cinematography: Adam Jandrup
Sound: b9
Costumes: Anne Werner
Light Søren Knud
Choreographer: Ida-Elisabeth Larsen
Light assistants: Allan Køldal, Aske Wagner
Light/grip: Michel Copeland
Assistant/dancer: Joy Sun-Ra Pawl Hoyle
Dancers: Ida Marie Kloster, Cecilie Kvorning
Still Photographer: Andreas Johnsen
Runner: Christian Winther Christensen
Curator: Lee Min Young, Stenka Helfach

First exhibited at Holstebro Museum of Art in 2014.
Installation: polyester organza, excerpts from The Four Gated city by Doris Lessing, 3 freezers with DNA material from 6 actors, 3 small videoprojectors, coppertube, 3 glasscontainers with soil, water and coal moving over three magnetic white triangles. Public big screen projection once every 24 hours.

Description
Generation investigates the maternally transferred mitochondrial DNA that links all of humanity together. In a post-futuristic performative installation where a combined color-filter spanning the whole space, complete scenography sewn in translucent red fabric and stage curtain , theater and film melts together with biology, science and a fictional underground activist group that writes, archives, sleeps, looks at the stars and clothes from centuries of culture and power, infused by the Doris Lessing Novel pre-apocalyptic “The Four gated city” and the ending of her Children of Violence series.

We are all related, but branched out in haplo-groups. We all carry epigenetic memory from countless wars, famines, trauma and events unimaginable. What shapes our cultures today? Are we our blood or are we our environment? We might just be both. The story of being before your time, having ideas before they can find a void to occupy or a medium to grow in and the silent maternal mitochondrial bond that bind us all through bodily memory.

In three miniature video projectors that looks handcrafted, post-apocalyptic, two actors acts out epigenetic collective memories of birth, dead, discovery, administration, trauma in a silent movie style. Three window freezers display blood, hair and other bio-samples from the actors in the space, as a frozen physical presence.

Credits
Video: 19:18 minutes
© Jette Hye Jin Mortensen, 2014
Credits
Producer: Claudia Saginario
Cinematography: Catherine Pattinama Coleman
Light: Annika Aschberg
Edit: Jette Hye Jin Mortensen
Actors:
Patrick Baurichter
Lourdes Faberes
Rikke Lassen
Massimo

Photo: Timme Hovind

Catalogue text by curator Anders Gaardboe Jensen
”It is, of course, difficult to predict how life sciences will develop in the future. In recent years, however, there have been major advances in the research field of molecular biology. These advances have led to greater certainty about the nature of heredity. It is a well-known fact that not only genes are passed down from parents to their children but also a number of environmental factors and behavior patterns are inherited. In addition, we have become aware of the so-called epigenetic inheritance, which, among other findings, shows that traumatic events in previous generations can have an influence on brain structure, behavior and sensitivity in the generations to come.

As a result, it causes major consequences for the perception of identity and the individual. What do for instance nationality, race and gender mean to the modern people in our globalized world where transnational adoption and new reproductive techniques challenge our traditional notions of belonging, kinship and ancestry? What implications does it have for our perception of humanity in general? How does an adoptee bring a country’s policies on normalization and the right to self-determination up for negotiation? Which resources are needed to create a different pic- ture of the human being - whether human, posthuman or inhuman? Are there other sorts of life ’out there’? These questions are crucial in Jette Hye Jin Mortensen’s (b. 1980) art practice, which is often based on auto- biographical material and performative installations.

Some of these problematic issues are very present to Jette Hye Jin Mortensen, who was born in Seoul and adopted to Denmark at the age of two. This has led to considerations whether what is strongest: the environment in which she grew up or the genetic ties from South Korea, the Korean language and culture.

Hye Jin Mortensen graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and has a background in music and experimental theater. She creates visual productions involving fluid choreography and narratives characterized by poetic and meditative moods. She is also known for her deep personal and sometimes relentless desire to challenge and overthrow established “truths”. A desire which is everywhere esthetically translat- ed into strong symbolic, conceptual and research-based works including senses, body, language and cognition.

A characteristic feature in the works of Hye Jin Mortensen is a joining of what seems to be conflicting issues, ways of expression and thinking. There are both room for inspiration from avantgarde music as well as the esthetics of pop music videos; quantum physics and psychoanalysis; neurobiology, astrophysics and ceremonial acts; and, finally, of Zen Buddhism which - at least to some extent - represents an alternative to the conventional scientific approach, ritualistic practices and psychological introspection. In addition, the expression of the body of work is often the result of interactions between flawless, conscious esthetics and a col- lective way of working, where Hye Jin Mortensen can pass on autonomy in the artistic expression by involving external partners and other participants. Finally, Hye Jin Mortensen ́s intuitive way of working is influenced by the so-called ’para-theater’, which follows the tradition of the Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski (1933-99), who endeavored to abolish the distinction between spectator and actor in his performances.

In other words; Hye Jin Mortensen is interested in transitions and passage. Although she often carries a transcendental approach, she never withdraws from the historical reality. Nevertheless, her personal experi- ence of being a minority is associated with a timeless perspective, which is specific in the ambiguousness of her artistic work, which on one hand is characterized by a recurrent (bio) technological longing for the future,and on the other hand is about the recovery of the feeling of cohesion between generations.

(in Danish)
Alle disse forhold gør sig i høj grad gældende i forbindelse med udstillingen GENERATIONpå Holstebro Kunstmuseum. Et stort scenetæppe lavet af sammensyede kostumer i rødt silkeorganza danner baggrund for et fiktivt, politisk teaterstykke som –måske, måske ikke –kan opføres engang ude i fremtiden. Skuespillerne –to afdøde, to nulevende og to endnu ikke fødte –er kun til stede via nedfrosne DNA-prøver og embryoner. Der refereres forskellige steder i udstillingsrummet til såkaldt haplogrupper, som betegner en form for stamtræer, der skulle demonstrere, at alle nulevende mennesker i teorien kan tilbageføres til én fælles stamfader/stammoder.

På en række videomonitorer gennemspilles forskellige reproduktive handlingsoptrin, hvori også indgår scenetæppets fysiske rekvisitter.Monitorerne henviser endvidere til de fire elementer –jord, ild, luft og vand –som samtidig spiller en afgørende rolle i den koreanske kulturssfære. Man må forstå, at det ikke mindst er i omgivelsernes påtrængende blikke, at den adopterede genkender og internaliserer sin egen ’fremmedhed’. Hos Hye Jin Mortensen synes denne synsfælde at udløse en identifikation med den utilpassede, med rebellen eller den oprørske unge, hvilket tydeliggøres gennem direkte henvisninger til Doris Lessings (1919-2013) forfatterskab, herunder især bogen The Four-Gated City fra 1969 (da. Byen med de fire porte). Gennem fremtidsfortællinger behandlede Lessing blandt andet temaer som racisme, kvindeliv og selvødelæggelsestrang, men aldrig uden helt at miste fornemmelsen for en højere virkelighed og indre, bevidsthedsmæssige revolutioner.

Hvor Hye Jin Mortensens tidligere ritualiserede selviscenesættelsesprocedurer har haft karakter af psykodramatiske maskespil (jævnfør eksempelvis The Silent Retreat fra 2001), danner Lessings romankunst denne gang en underlægningstekst, der tillader andre og nye udsigelsespositioner med et frisættende potentiale. Gennem fiktive fortællinger, som henter sine ressourcer i antiautoritære visioner og en særpræget retrofuturistisk æstetik, etablerer Hye Jin Mortensen et gestisk drama, som forbinder ospå tværs af racekategorier. På denne måde taler GENERATION til mennesket i dets fortidige, nutidige og fremtidige skikkelser”.

First exhibited at The 5th Socle Du Monde Biennale, HEART Museum of Art in Denmark.

Installation: Conceptual videoart installation, script and performative process. 30+1 glass screens, laminated wood, 2 screen videoprojection with sound, 2 lightboxes with seats. Publication/script with in 30+1 chapters. Conceptual workprocess with 7 actors from Hollywood.
Photo: Timme Hovind

7 Hollywood actors re-enacted a script I wrote about life-changing moments where other people´s experiences made such an impression through empathy, that their experiences became part of my identity and life story. The 30+1 glasspanes represented my age at the time of the project.

31 glass panes, 2 screen video loop, sound, glossy black wooden monolith 19 meters long, 2 seats and light boxes with chapters of the video, script over my life from a collective perspective of important relationships. The actors went through a collective meditation process with me and during live-instructed film sessions, they used their acting technique to explain and transform themselves into other people they only met through the echo within the artist instructing them.

I wanted to investigate how individual identity is formed by culture and social relationships collectively. We learn to express emotions on the outside, but how? Partly from (western) media, film and series maybe. From watching and being watched by others. Through relationships and empathy. Writing our opinions, beliefs, convictions collectively through a multiple mirror of faces we distribute our trust and time with.

First exhibited 2022 at Krognoshuset, Sweden.
Installations:
Perennial Dinner / Heritage Cabbage
Sensory World Game (interactive)
Staff wellness
This text is about the exhibition - when it is over

My body is dreaming. Of Perennial Cabbage. Green Kale. Napa. Standing tall, dense with nutrition. Thick leaves, glistening snow on top. Yellow flowers and tiny, dark seeds in brittle shells. I place a few seeds in small pots with moist compost in March. Transplant the small sprouts into bigger pots when two chubby leaves are showing. We eat bitter, finely chopped leaves in the summer. Survive on frost bitten, sweet vitamin-C rich stews in winter. We make kimchi. I recolonise my gut microbiome with growth and care. I love you, Brassicaceae.
Sprinkle salt and bake in the oven to crispy chips. Use instead of spinach. Chop. Cook.

WHAT DO ARTISTS DO IN A CLIMATE CRISIS?
I started my quest of saving the world in the 1980´s zeitgeist of Greenpeace and VHS videos in school of baby seals being skinned. My friend and I would stand at the local supermarket and freeze with her dog, collecting money for endangered species and the WWF. We would get tired halfway and end up buying cakes for half of it. When I look back, I do see these halfway breaks as a form of very important self care. Activism is hard work. Burnout is inevitable.

When I had my first son and finally woke up from the collective art-career-psychosis, I realised, that I had grown tired of working with art the way I did. It did not correlate with my values. Breaking my body and health on demands for spectacular projects, that forced all my creative energy into production, pitching my project over and over again until all passion had fizzled away, spending more than I earned on storing installations. Travelling all the time and saying goodnight to my kid on the phone. Driving my artworks to the landfill and watch all my thinking basically being burned.

It could be a beautiful analogy for the artwork as a sand mandala; there for a moment, swept away. Except it wasn’t at all.
I moved out of Copenhagen to Roskilde with my family and the next years I spend insatiably getting to know everything about plants and permaculture. As the founder Bill Mollison coined the permaculture core values: Earth care, People care, Fair share; it wasn’t such a stretch from my feminist, postcolonial, antiracist, left-wing, anti-speciesism, activist beliefs. Just immensely different approaches and schooling. I kept asking myself: where does the outcome of artistic creation belong on the sliding scale between being a consumer and being constructive?

In our household we sort our trash, eat plants instead of meat, save up for an electrical car. But one unanswered question keeps bugging me: what do artists do in a climate crisis? When we look at facts, the world is well beyond the sustainability issue. Greenwashing aside, we need to regenerate and rebuild resources on every level and our profession needs to take action too. Poisonous materials, luxury market objects? Goodbye. Artworks and exhibitions with ethical labelling? Hello!

Jette Hye Jin Mortensen´s Three Pocket Philosophy Rules for Healthy Artmaking
1. Work with materials that feel alive in your hands.
2. Create things that has a purpose in this world.
3. Create something that keeps you excited

I began to see the upperclass aesthetics everywhere as the status competitions they are. Mining the Earth for precious metals, whipping nature into cut grass landscapes with no biodiversity. Artists spending their whole lives painting, sewing and building extravagant backdrops for the few. My adoptee grandparents were poor, but self sufficient farmers; every Christmas they wished for a single silver fork or spoon, so that they one day could collect a full dining set for their wedding. Like the royals. Just to lurk in dark drawers and at antique markets today. Now, 36% of all CO2 output comes from food production, transport and waste; at the same time, two generations have forgotten how to grow their own food. We consume endlessly in a maze of decadent culture, fear of rejection and hollow talk. Seven years ago, I quit the art world, but I still make art.

My practice has become more seasonal. More holistic, local and permanent. Every plant I grow for my kitchen is one freelance job less. And one more habitat for butterflies. I have multiple frustrating trial and errors. Have become a certified pemaculture designer. Kept to myself to keep it real. Made new friends, new ideas and finally designed my dreamjob on the border between art, science and permaculture. One tool I use is IKIGAI; a japanese life-work concept. I used to be way off the center. Were do you see yourself right now?

ECOLABELLED!
Let´s try this. Earth care, People care and Fair share were used thoughout the production of this exhibition. I fundraised when my idea was ripe, got money for two months of work and tried to limit myself to this, mentally and physically. No new materials that cannot be composted, grown or 100% recycled. No new plastic or concrete. Existing art installations and upcycled materials were taken out of storage and used, rainwater, old silverware, personal houseware, used bedlinen, clay, perennial cabbage seeds, beans, paper, wool, reused pleather, silk, linen, Krognoshuset´s tables and eco print. And for the first time in many years, I plan to have a good time while installing! You are all invited to dinner: please take home a few cabbage seeds and grow them. Work less and do meaningful things. Discover natural abundance and take halfway cake breaks with your friends.

First exhibited at Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art in 2011.

Installation and 9-day performance: violet chiffon, 3 performers, 2 video projections, computer with live feed connected to projector, food, water, mattresses, meditation bell ringing every hour, conceptual collaboration process during the writing of the script “The Silent Retreat”.
The script was performed on the last day where the curtain is opened up and the read by the 3 performers in cacophony.

I was interested in inner dialogue, communication and how subtle relationships form in space and time. The curtain creates a soft and tactile panopticon, that equally protects and displays 3 performers for many hours for the audience. Interactions occured at times were a performer would for example hold hands with a visitor for extended periods of time in anonymous, but very moving exchanges. In general, many visitors treated the room as a place to sit for some time. Maybe to reflect, (not) be alone or something else. The silent communication and personal, but at the same time, collaborative writing of the script, revealed inner moods and changing waves of energy for the performers and each day they had a small inspiration note that would guide them through the day.

Co-Actors: Amira Jasmina Jensen og Emil Groth Larsen
Scenography assistance: Sille Dons Heltoft
Kuratering: Marie Thams
Photo: Timme Hovind

What do we actually see? Fact: white light is not perceived as the same white in all cultures.

Natural sunlight prismatic colors projected onto transparent sculptures at night during Copenhagen Light Art Festival 2019 in collaboration with Anders Thorseth from DTU Fotonics. Art and science comes together and opens up our experience of colour and that the world might have a quite multidimensional view, that we constantly interpret and try to understand.

Why can we see complimentary colors with the human eye, that we cannot measure? What is pure registration and what is culture? Artist´s have always found inspiration in Wolfgang von Goethe´s experience oriented colorspectum and western science have in many ways been build upon Isaac Newton, who first proved a colorspectum with sunlight through a glass prism.

The project also consisted of workshops in collaboration with architect Sara Mesquita where participants could build their own physical prism filter from cardboard and glass prisms and upload a photo to Orestadens Instagram.

With the installations, I wanted to create organic lines in Orestaden´s monumental architecture and connections to the water in the canals, the sunlight and the human scale through a series of immersive, transparent orbs hovering over the water in the canals and projected slow, turning colorspectrums made entirely from prismatic effect and sunlight. On the lawn, running through one of the installations, were a large scale graphic line of lightwaves in grasspaint, that dissapeared over time.

Commissioned by Grundejerforeningen Orestad Nord and Orestad Vandlaug. In collaboration with DTU Fotonics and Engelbrecht Construction.

Photography (picture 1 & 2) : Marcus Frostholm

Permanent Lightart Installation in the town Thorsoe, Denmark. Commissioned by Favrskov Municipality and the Danish Arts Foundation. Finished in 2017 as one in three light art projects. Was selected by the community by public vote after a national open call to all professional artists.

Title: Engen / The Meadow

Dried wild plants collected with citizens, epoxy, wood, LED lighting, timer, glassfiber, cement, iron.

Photo: Asbjørn Sand

Production team: Therese Maria Gram

Made in collaborations with the citizens of Thorsoe and the natural surroundings of the town. The 10 meter long bench with local plants, dried and cast in epoxy, lights up at 5 PM every afternoon to signal the end of the work day. It is situated at the community house, playground and grocery shop in the middle of town and functions as a playtool, a bench and a signifier of the time of day. As a status quo herbarium of Thorsoe and its surroundings, I took citizens of the town on a nature walk with a guide to find weeds and edible plants. We talked a lot about the flora and fauna and cooked half of the plants over fire as delicious plantpaddies. The rest I took to the community house and cut, pressed and dried for many months, airbrushed to preserve the colour and cast in numerous thin layers of epoxy with specialist Vagn Iversen.

Permanent art installation at Holmens Kanal 20 in the center of Copenhagen. It has been completely renovated by The Danish Building Agency in 2017-2019.

The functionalist building was drawn in 1937 by architect Fritz Schlegel and was originally the institution Overformynderiet, that worked as guardians of minors and women before emancipation in 1899. The 81 lamps (references the year 1899 : 18 - 99 = - 81) are made in brass, glass and solid oak; 100% reusable materials. They are programmed to follow the cycle of the seasons over the course of a year and play different light patterns according to eastern astrology and their symbolic material properties. The purple waves in the ceiling are painted with natural chalk paint like traditional houses and cut to in the same pattern as theta brain waves, that can occur during deep meditation, immense creativity or as a natural state of small children 40% of their awake time...! Red and blue symbolizes feminine and masculine qualities in the Korean symbol taeguk and mixed together they become purple. Also a prominent color in the 1960/70s psychedelic period. The HK20 building is the residence of the Danish Ministry of Employment and the Ministry of Climate and Energy.

From 2022 the completion of a second art installation will take place at the headquarters of the Ministry of Climate in the other part of the building.

Coming up

Illustration by Sara Mesquita

Coming up

First exhibited at ARoS Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017-18.

Installation: silk parachute from WWII (1942), mouthblown glass objects with topography 3D print, iron construction.
Photos: Timme Hovind

Description
The installation is a healing space for forgotten collective trauma. As a starting point for healing wounds that date back several generations the installation re-establishes a balance between natural elements, multiple traditions and ancient experience that make up our physical organisms and mental energies. I believe that this exercise is particularly important today, at a time when our collective memories about our (traumatic) experiences of war and conflict are being forgotten and new wars are begun as rapidly as governments and presidents succeed one another. Even though our limited human consciousness forgets, the body and the spirit remembers.

Buddhism speaks of karma. It states that different forces are at work in us and drag us in particular directions unless we are mindful of them. Classical Greek thought believed that the world was made out of four elements – air, earth, fire and water, to which Aristotle added the aether – and this laid down the basis for the scientific revolution of the Middle Ages. It is also in keeping with current Western thought: matter and the human body are thought to be present only in a single, earthly life, as one physical form. The Indian Ayurveda school of thought has five elements: air, earth, fire, water and aether, which is also known as “akasha” or “space”. These five are also regarded as elements that make up our bodies, diet, seasons and thinking. They can cause states of balance or imbalance and are associated with the idea of reincarnation and a return to the fundamental form of materials. Chinese philosophy has five elements too: air, earth, fire, water, wood and metal. But in Chinese philosophy the elements govern how our senses perceive the world – they act as mediums or conduits for our senses. The elements are vessels of metamorphosis, of shifting forms of being. Physical manifestations are no more real than what our senses tell us. The experiences of the mind are ranked on a par with the physical world.

Different elements such as stone, glass, fire, metal, space and air are arranged in varying stages, interacting with the scale of the human body and the law of gravitation. At the top is an American silk parachute from World War II (1942). At the beginning of the war, parachutes were made of silk, but when relations with Japan became strained the Americans ran out of silk and had to develop alternative materials. A parachute protects the body directly, but when used by paratroopers it can represent either liberation or invasion; rather like the varying roles played by super powers internationally. How pre-historic humans lived, we really don´t know. Maybe the most sustainable balanced cultures in their brilliance precisely did choose not to leave traces behind, to step lightly on earth and where never described and thus colonised. The hunt for valuables and raw materials predates the colonial era and wars did leave marks in landscapes and pathways, so if we take a wide view of human history, the wars of the world, can be seen and experienced as a sweeping, aggressive fire that runs rampant through our DNA as an epigenetic layer of inherent trauma and survivalism.

First exhibited at Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark, 2015

Installation: print on silk, paper and plastic, display freezer with a piece of the Murchison meteorite, curtain, video, pleather, copper, sound.

Photos: Jette Hye Jin Mortensen

Text by Anders Gaardboe Jensen

”(..)

In Cut. Expand. Digest. Disperse. The Murchison Monologue, Hye Jin Mortensen challenges the idea about the basic building blocks which creates and defines human culture, our rhythms and tools, in a fertile and speculative way. The exhibition is based on the complex and carbon- aceous molecular structure of the Murchison meteorite. The meteorite which hit the Earth in fragments in 1969, near the town of Murchison, Victoria in Australia, is the foundation for much of our knowledge about the early solar system and - not at least - the origin of life as we know it. Crucial to Hye Jin Mortensen is also the Murchison meteorite’s content of extraterrestrial amino acids which might be the very foundation for life elsewhere.

Through a monologue concerning life on earth, Hye Jin Mortensen stages a fragment of the Murchison meteorite as the actual protagonist of the exhibition. This shift in perspective allows other positions of utter- ance and forms of consciousness than human, which opens up a larger contextual story about the complex life forms of earthly life. This starting point which deals with the myth of creation is a central structure in the exhibition’s visual manifestation and the organic patterns, crystallization processes, and sculptural objects which populate it - all molded using handmade tools from biochemical models. The exhibition also includes a series of silk fabrics, which are used as references to the silkworm, Bombyx mori, whose domesticated variant is distinguished by major transformations in its lifetime, and whose survival is completely depend- ent on human beings. The exhibition thus also becomes a story about how life forms are part of a productive symbiosis with the environment. Moreover, the silkworm and the processing of silk are dependent on ancient crafts and cultural traditions. The involvement of the cultural history of silk constitutes a system of metaphorical and material relays, through which nature and human are redefined.

There is an element of expectation and experiment to the exhibition in all its cosmic mystery. Its dizzying perspective in many ways defies the linear logical development, thereby questioning the possibilities, that science present us with. Not least the question of what version of our history is the dominant one, in the larger narrative of the evolution of our planet. The exhibition is a dramatic reconstruction of nature and man, and at the same time, it has the character of a continuous transforma- tion process with its elementary building blocks, which turn into tools, which not only work as esthetic production models, but also to some extend become anthropomorphic, as if they contain a (self) consciousness. In other words, Hye Jin Mortensen is interested in the complex ways that culture produces science and science produces culture. In this way, the exhibition has no beginning and no end. Instead it creates differ- ences, ambiguities, and paradoxes. Cut. Expand. Digest. Disperse. The Murchison Monologue represents an expectant, progressive and bilateral attempt simultaneously to grasp the idea of a radical Otherness and the ultimate connectedness of everything.”

First exhibited at Sculpture Triennial Odense 14 in 2014.
Installation: polyester organza, iron structure, underwater lighting, speakers and sound.
Performance 3 singers, costumes in organza, music partiture. Duration: 30 minutes.

Photos: Timme Hovind / Jan Søndergaard

Text by Charlotte Sprogøe

“Human reproduction, creation and identity have been the central factors in a number of Jette Hye Jin Mortensen´s works. This time her examinations are placed in a futuristic scenario where choir voices in the trees of Munke Mose and lights under the surface of the lake create an out-of-this-world, timeless sci-fi atmosphere. The sculpture has been created specifically for the park, the choral work is presented by the Funen Opera and the score Lux Aeterna / Eternal Light has been rewritten for this work by composer Eyvind Gulbrandsen in co-operation with the artist. The collaboration with external working partners and the interaction with their practise is a recurrent theme in her works, which often focus on how to challenge your self as an artist. The result aims at creating something, which is not constructed and controlled by the artist, but instead made out of the reflections and actions of the process. Spirituality, weightlessness and performativity are all key elements in Hye Jin Mortensen´s practice. In other works concrete cultural questions of identity have been in focus, but in this etheral and almost immaterial work it is the very creation of life, which is the main topic. In the lyrics we hear references to questions of donor and insemination issues, which might be an even bigger debate issue in the future. “

The Funen Opera will presented a live performance of the work in Munke Mose on August 30, 2014.

Production:
Costumedesign: Anne Werner
Tailoring: Ane Rønne & Sten Martin Jonsson
Iron construction and soundinstallation: Eyvind Gulbrandsen
Technical drawings and loudspeaker system: Mikkel Friis-Møller
Composition and sound: Eyvind Gulbrandsen
Singers:
David Kragh Sørensen
Emma Oemann
Michelle Nora Lind
Simon Mott Madsen

Text excerpts: Charis Thompson "Making Parents, The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies"

Permanent light sculptures and part of three works in the city Thorsoe in Jutland, Denmark. Supported by Favrskov Municipality and The Danish Arts Council and initiated by Thorsø Håndværker og Borgerforening. Finalized in 2018. Made in collaboration with printable suncell company InfinityPV and world leading scientist Frederik C. Krebs.

The three works are thought of as a cycle between past-present-future and between changeable expressions that bind three generations together: old age, adulthood and childhood. The design of the project is conceptual and a three-part process between nature's language, the citizens' choices and my ideas as an artist. Thorsø is a small community with strong unity, active citizens and a place people to return to establish their family. Along the path that binds the city together, there are over hundred year old oaks and at the end a lake has been created artificially. Humans have formed nature here for generations and we also know that microorganisms from nature also shape our temper and mind. It is a synergy. Therefore, high sustainability was also a priority.

Into The Mirror

Performance at Format Art Space, Denmark, and CRAC 1st Cremona Art Festival in collaboration with puppeteer Sif Hymøller Jensen in 2013.

With a thin curtain participants are separated, but collaborate together with one holding a hand doll. The session starts with a meditation on empathy and connectedness. Then the doll awakens! The doll instructs the other person to move, to feel different emotions and then the puppeteer instructs the other person to take over instructing the doll.

Title: Violet Visions (orig. Violette Visioner) was a traveling art installation with cultural events in 6 municipalities commissioned by Culture Ring East Jutland in 2017 and part of Culture Capital Aarhus2017. The aim is to make a hybrid, cultural statement that transcends red and blue (political) fractions and puts culture in the center of any community as the glue that holds us together.

The installation grows bigger and more colorful during its travels through Jutland with workshops and events for grown ups and children. Materials: galvanized iron in fibonnaci numbers that reaches a diameter of 13 meters, fabric flags made in workshops, string curtains, events.

Samsoe Municipality: cultural fusion food-art event with prizewinning chef Yasser Rahim Naz.

Odder Municipality: flag design workshop with designer Anne Werner.

Norddjurs Municipality: yoga workshop with Urd Lacroix.

Syddjurs Municipality: workshop and reading with writer Josefine Klougart.

Skanderborg Municipality: choir performance by composer Eyvind Gulbrandsen and IKI.

Favrskov Municipality: koncert with Katrine Stochholm and workshop with Favrskov culture schools and cand. mag. Marie Lange.

Collaborations and sponsors: Smededesign, Det Lille Sommerhotel, Sløjfen, Eriksminde Efterskole, Skanderborg Kulturhus, Sletterhage Fyrs venner, Kulturskolerne i Favrskov, Odder Bibliotek, Kvickly i Odder, Cementvarefabrikken i Sælvig.

The title of the exhibition, The Voyage Out, is taken from Virginia Woolf's first novel from 1915, the year Munkeruphus was drawn. The novel depicts an educational journey, where the book's main character is gradually liberated as the story progresses. The book is written with several narrators' voices, who are all on a common journey.

Performative, processual co-creation installation. Munkeruphus, 2015. Copper and insect netting, theater wardrobe light installed around window, umbrellas, chair etc. in room, A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf and performative collaborations with Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt, Sif Jessen Hymøller, Joan Rang and Rosa Sand Michelsen.

Curated by Therese Maria Gram

To Carl Nielsen, my Great Grandfather.

My first language and cultural reference is Danish, I sang in the church choir and grew up in a christian household. I was sent from South Korea when I was 2 years old to a Danish working class family in Jutland after a very questionable paper-adoption from a Korean academic family.

My Great Grandfather (2004) I made the first video when the Danish Ministry of culture in 2004 initiated a Danish Culture Canon simultaneously with a European rise in nationalism. Carl Nielsen being one of the most productive and beloved Danish composers and curator of psalmbooks and song collections was of course a central part of this. At the same time, reasearch showed that he himself had been part of a nationalist movement in his time, trying to define a national sentiment and aesthetic. So it seems, the invention of national aesthetics build on previous inventions in this case, rather than real traditions. His own music has been analyzed for patterns or styles that can be thought of as specific to a Danish characteristic, but other than being influenced by European movements, there has not been found any. His wife, artist Anne-Marie Carl Nielsen went to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts as myself and in many aspects I can see how she tried to find her way as a female artist and mother, torn between her family, her husband and her work. They both reflected on how artistic lives, family life and the financial appreciation of artists seemed incompatible on all levels, Carl being paid 50 Danish kroner once for Jens Vejmand, one of the most known of his songs and a widely beloved part of the Danish cultural heritage.
Interviewer: Suada Demirovic

New Songbooks (2005), the second video, is a collaboration between me, composer Christian Winther Christensen and poet Maja Lee Langvad. Inspired by Oswald de Andrades Anthropofagic Manifesto that introduced the term `cultural cannibalism', I initiated a series of projects that found its material in traditional forms of works in music, writing, art, language and even television, and suggested new readings, combinations and distortions. New Songbooks is one of these projects together with numerous performance partitures.

In these projects, I put the other, or the immigrant protagonist, in the center of history and national culture production. Whereas my asian roots often mirrors a service function or production line in a western context, my sewing machine performing, conductor-suit dressed character reassemble, or even cook up, a national being, that is both inside and outside, full of memories, critique and love for the artistic elements. Instead of being suppressed while sewing the flag-like fabric, I whistle small parts of Carl Nielsen in a joyous mood. I am the worker and the owner of this factory, all in one

Performance at U-Turn Quardennial for Contemporary Art, Carlsberg, 2008.

Musik: Christian Winther Christensen
Lyrik: Maja Lee Langvad
Sangere/skuespillere: Christian Winther Christensen, Regin Pedersen, Isabella Kragerup, Lasse Scwanenflügel Piasecki, Mathilde Kirknæs, Marie Grove, Nikolaj Worsae, mfl.

Installationphotos: Anders Sune Berg
Performancephotos: Andreas Rosforth

© Jette Hye Jin Mortensen

2017 / Public commission in Thorsoe, Denmark by Favrskov Municipality and The Danish Arts Council.

Thorsoe is a small city in the middle of Jutland, Denmark. The name is a reference to Nordic Mythology and the god of thunder, Thor. In the daylight, the solid oak tree covered in glassfiber looks white, leaning over the lake and mirroring. In the evening, blue fluorescent pigment creates a subtle light and the treeshape becomes a blue lightning in the dark water.

Produced by VI Design. Photos by people in Thorsoe, from top to bottom: Heine Mann and Dorthe Christensen.

First exhibited at SPECTA Gallery in 2011.
Installation: hardwood, text transcribed from ‘A Conversation With Myself’ by Alan Watts, 3 canaries, photos in hardwood frames, sound and speaker in hardwood, plexiglass, box with scent, chiffon.

Photo: Timme Hovind

The exhibition is a sensory three-way, time-expanded gaze into what it takes to create and exhibition and the origin of ideas and thoughts from research/materials/body to collaboration/inspiration/dialogue to the (natural) space around us with creatures and things we don´t quite understand. Like Borromean rings, the three parts seem intertwined and cannot exist without the other.

The first part is a space of objects (Alan Watts´ “A Conversation with myself” coming out of a speaker, wood, scent, fabric, woodprint, soaked copy of Strindbergs Inferno, a photo of the Seine in Paris were Inferno was thrown into the river in frustration and later retrieved again, foil text with psychoanalytical inspirations and borromean rings).

The second part is a series of photographies representing aesthetic choices of an actress and her family, posing on the images. The actress is performing a transcription of Alan Watts´ “A Conversation with myself,” silently, while she instructs me on were and how to take the photos.

The third part is a room covered in translucent, green-ish fabric with a large wood voilére with three canary birds and Alan Watts´transcibed text printed on the glass, as a script to the birds.

30 min. cluster chord meditation for 10 singers with Ligeti, Penderecki, Riley and Glass in the background.

Performance at Kopenhagen Art Week, 2010, at The VM Mountain by Bjarke Ingels in the final stages of construction. The audience arrived to a mash-up of voice compositions by famous modernist and minimalist composers Ligeti, Penderecki, Riley and Glass playing from large outdoor speakers. When they arrived on schedule, a bell sound would indicated the beginning inside the raw building and then the singers slowly began to blend in with the audience, listening and reacting towards each other. They were instructed to mirror energies and moods, becoming a collective, improvising voice-composition entity. The title of the performance was a page-long essay about the artist and a mountain in Korea and when one singer began to read, everyone would follow and then slowly go back to singing.

Filmed by Sun Hee Engelstoft

Below: 1st ACTS Performance Festival, cluster chord performance at The Museum for Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark, 2011.

© Jette Hye Jin Mortensen