Movement Is Not a Motif, but a Condition

On 2 May 2026, Horsens Art Museum opens its doors to Martha Skou’s first solo museum exhibition: STREAM OF STRINGS.

The exhibition is open to museum visitors from 11 am to 4 pm. At 2 pm, the exhibition will be marked by museum curator Julie Horne Møller and artist Martha Skou. At 3 pm, Martha Skou will give an introduction to the exhibition.

With this exhibition, she takes as her point of departure a fundamental question: Is it possible to step outside the world and observe it, or are we always already part of its movements?

At a time when our perception is increasingly shaped by technological systems, and when our relationship to the physical and the living is shifting, Martha Skou explores how movement, energy, and materiality shape our way of being in the world.

STREAM OF STRINGS unfolds through textile installations, ceramic reliefs, sculptures, and sound. Across materials, Martha Skou works with forces and phenomena that we do not normally register directly—such as vibrations, waves, and currents. She allows them to emerge as physical and spatial experiences, where energy does not appear as something abstract. It circulates, shifts, and moves through both organic and inorganic materials, across bodies, spaces, and surfaces.

“I have a fixed point of departure, but I try to follow the movements that are already present in the materials. Sometimes it feels as if the works arise somewhere between what I do and what the material itself wants,” says Martha Skou.

The exhibition enters into a dynamic interplay with museum visitors. As a visitor, one steps into a circuit of influences in which movements and connections circulate, and where the boundary between body, space, and material is continually blurred.

“STREAM OF STRINGS invites the museum’s visitors to experience themselves as part of the exhibition. With her experimental approach to materials, Martha Skou explores how energy and movement can be transformed into artistic expressions,” says Julie Horne Møller, curator at Horsens Art Museum.

Martha Skou is a Danish artist who has lived in several places around the world and is now based in Copenhagen. She works across disciplines at the intersection of sculpture, sound, performance, and textile. Her practice combines analytical and experimental methods in an exploration of how energy, materiality, and perception interact. With a focus on the inherent dynamics, movement, and resonance of materials, she creates abstract, atmospheric universes in both spatial installations and two-dimensional formats.

Martha Skou holds a master’s degree from the Royal Danish Academy, Design, and has a background in music. Music plays a central role in her work, where sound performances, graphic scores, and visual objects function as a form of visual music.

She has taken part in international residencies and exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York, Maison du Danemark in Paris, Telfair Museums in Savannah, ARoS in Aarhus, and Pioneer Works in New York.

Exhibition period: Saturday 2 May – Sunday 13 September 2026.

The exhibition I kindly supported by: Ny Carlsbergfondet, Statens Kunstfond, Statens værksteder for kunst, Familien Hede Nielsens Fond, Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond, Knud Højgaards Fond, Beckett Fonden and Toyota Fonden.

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