PRESENTATION: Kaååråålines Vers
The Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde presents Kaååråålines Vers (Karolines Verses) featuring works of artist Karoline Ebbesen (1852–1936), who was admitted to Sct. Hans Hospital (today, Mental Health Centre Sct. Hans) from the mid-1880s until her death. The exhibition showcases a wide selection of Ebbesen’s texts, appliqués, images, and textile works.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde Archive
in “Kaååråålines Vers” Karoline Ebbesen’s historical works are displayed alongside works of five contemporary artists who, across time and place, have found kinship and inspiration in her world of text and images: Lise Haller Baggesen, Line Storm, Gudrun Hasle, Georgina Maxim, and Matilde Duus. Drawing from Ebbesen’s practice, the exhibition brings together new and older works featuring angels with one wing, windows in the chest, lanterns of love, pockets, dolls, moons, and sunbeams. By placing Ebbesen in dialogue with contemporary colleagues who over the years have discovered resonances in her life and work, the exhibition seeks to shed new light on her unique artistry and to show her continuing relevance today. The exhibition’s title is taken from one of her texts, reflecting her own phonetic spellings and her search for the higher divine. Central to her writings and images are religious themes, everyday life at Sct. Hans, and family members: among them, her deceased sister “Little Anna”. Ebbesen was immensely productive. Today, a few hundred of her works still exist: texts, appliqués, and images drawn, painted, or cut in paper, along with nine textiles. She often gifted her works to the hospital’s doctors, some of whom later donated them to the Museum Sct. Hans, which kindly lent them to this exhibition. Her works carry no notes on dates or titles. Instead, we unfold the most recurring motifs on the smaller exhibition signs, motifs that have also inspired many of the contemporary artists in this exhibition. Among them: the lantern of love, the moon, angels with one wing, windows in the chest, angel dolls, and pockets.
Lise Haller Baggesen’s work “Lille Solstråle sad og så på Månen” (Little Sunray Sat Watching the Moon) (2025) is a collaborative project between Baggesen, composer Anders Lauge Meldgaard and the choir BARK. The work comprises several sound compositions based on Ebbesen’s texts and costumes in the form of disposable PPE overalls with patchwork appliqué and embroidery inspired by Ebbesen’s imagery. Gudrun Hasle has created a new sculptural textile work inspired by Karoline Ebbesen’s recurrent motif of one-winged angels. The work, “Jeg har kun en vinge“ (I’ve Only Got One Wing) (2025), comprises a large angel wing with embroidered texts by Ebbesen and herself. Where Ebbesen created her own font, alphabet, and spelling, Hasle utilises her dyslexia in her artistic work with text and language. Hasle’s kinship reaches beyond language, technique, and materials. Ebbesen’s angels, their wings incomplete leaving them unable to fly, thus become emblematic of a fellowship stretching across time, not merely as artists but also as patients in psychiatric care, a subject addressed by Hasle in her early works. Georgina Maxim works with mending and repair in her textile works and installations: “Sewing, stitching, knitting, weaving, and appliqué are all granny manners. It is as if they are of a past time and yet they also celebrate alone times in a contemporary way—the ability to have serious patience and endure the monotony of the stitch.” In the exhibition, she presents several works, both new and older, including: “Treasure is Everywhere” (2025) placed on the red podium, is a patchwork of pockets and pouches from discarded psychiatric hospital garments from Mutare General Hospital in Zimbabwe. Matilde Duus’ encounter with Ebbesen’s works has had an immense impact on her practice. She began working with a system of symbols in her own works, inspired by Ebbesen, and found a new direction in her practice. Amongst the showcased pieces by Duus is “Sorte måne, vinkende hånd “(Black moon, waving hand) (2016) consisting of a hand and a black ball both made of glass. In a series of watercolors, Ebbesen paints black moons on the horizon, like an eclipse.
Works by: Karoline Ebbesen, Lise Haller Baggesen, Georgina Maxim, Gudrun Hasle, Matilde Duus and Line Storm
Photo: Installation view “Kaååråålines Vers”, Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde – Roskilde, 2025, Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde
Info: Curator: Lotte Løvholm, Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde, Kurhusvænge 3, Roskilde, Denmark, Duration: 14/9-7/12/2025, Days & Hours: Wed & Sat-Sun 12:00-17:00, https://samtidskunst.dk/
