Exhibition period: Saturday, January 18, 2025 – Sunday, August 3, 2025.

The Sixth Sorrow – sevenfold pietà with angel and deviations

Horsens Art Museum presents SIGNA for the first time with the total installation The Sixth Sorrow – sevenfold Pietá with angel and deviations. The starting point for the project is the mother figure as a central figure in our understanding of gender.
The work takes its clear starting point from SIGNA’s general sensual and spatial installations, where the boundary between fiction and reality is fluid and where the viewer’s usual perception is often challenged. The exhibition project will be Horsens Art Museum’s biggest exhibition venture to date.

The total installation is built on the basis of kitchen tableaux, as well as constructions and accumulations of old bed linen, curtains, towels and clothes. In these, SIGNA has created a number of variations on the classic medieval Pietá motif (Mary sitting with the dead body of Jesus). These Pietá representations are created from materials such as hair, bones and used textiles. With The Sixth Sorrow – sevenfold Pietá with angel and deviations  SIGNA focuses on what spells, superstitions and the notion of female sacrifice mean, as well as contemporary and historical customs and practical measures around motherhood are explored.

The exhibition concept is by Signa Köstler. Exhibition design and construction by Arthur Köstler, Lorenz Vetter and Signa Köstler. Artistic Collaboration by Tristian Kold. The Sixth Sorrow – sevenfold Pietá with angel and deviations  comprehensive soundscape is created by Elias Gottstein, Christian Bo Johansen and Danscher Koret. 

The exhibition is generously supported by by the Danish Arts Foundation, the New Carlsberg Foundation, the Beckett Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation and the Hede Nielsen Family Foundation.

Opening
The exhibition opens on Saturday, January 18, 2025, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. with free admission to Horsens Art Museum all day. Everyone is welcome. The opening will be celebrated at 2:00 p.m.  where a glass of bubbles or soda will also be served.
The artists will be present.

About SIGNA
SIGNA, is an artist collective based in Copenhagen and founded by Signa (b.1975) and Arthur Köstler (b.1972). The group is known for their performance installations, where the audience is invited to interact and in some cases influence the works. SIGNA’s site-specific projects, often performed in non-traditional institutional locations, explore structures of power, identity and desire through improvisation and sensory rich environments. Their works, which vary in length from six hours to 12 hours non-stop, dissolve the boundary between performer and audience and create deeply immersive experiences. With a visual expression that weaves threads from different historical and cultural contexts – ranging from post-Soviet institutions to aristocratic rococo – SIGNA creates layered, memorable installations that invite the audience to delve into complex, fictional worlds.

Signa Köstler has been nominated for several prestigious awards: the Reumert Prize for Salò (2010) and Seven Tales of Misery (2006) as well as an invitation to the Berlin Theatertreffen 2008 with Die Erscheinungen der Martha Rubin (selected as one of the 10 best theater performances of 2007). She received the Danish Director’s Award in 2006 and was awarded the Bisballe Prize in 2005. In 2022  she was invited to Berliner Theatertreffen with Die Ruhe and was awarded Faustpreis for best scenography 2023, for Das 13. Jahr.  In 2024, Signa Köstler received the Danish Arts Foundation’s Lifetime Honorary Grant in the Performing Arts.

Photo credits: Erich Goldmann