Horsens Art Museum presents SIGNA for the first time with the total installation The Sixth Sorrow in January 2025. The starting point for the project is the mother figure as a central figure in our understanding of gender and care.
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 Sixth Sorrow is researched in close collaboration with researcher in women’s history Astrid Elkjær Sørensen and the work’s comprehensive soundscape is created by the composer Martin Stig Andersen.

The total installation is built in a landscape of tent-like constructions and accumulations of old bedding, curtains and towels. In this framework, a number of variations of the classic medieval Pietá motif (Mary sitting with the dead body of Jesus) are created.
These Pieta productions are created from so-called private materials such as hair, bones and used textiles. While other parts of the installation contain emotional birth and nursing room tableaus, with a clear reference to ethnographic dioramas.
With The Sixth Sorrow, SIGNA focuses on what spells, superstitions and the notion of female sacrifice mean, as well as exploring contemporary and historical customs and practical measures around birth and motherhood.

The exhibition is generously supported by Statens Kunstfond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, Beckett Fonden, Augustinus Fonden and Familien Hede Nielsens Fond.

For further information, please contact curator Julie Horne Møller at jhmo@horsens.dk