Danish photographer Per Morten Abrahamsen has been a frequent contributor of pictures for the advertising, magazine and fashion industries. Abrahamsen's big breakthrough came with his production of portrait photographs of well-known Danes for 'Monthly Magazine Press' and 'The Business Daily Børsen'. Here businessmen/women, politicians and artists were depicted in humorous, imaginative and provocative tableaux which, partly, opposed the prevalent aesthetic norms of the portrait genre and, partly, set new standards for the possibilities of staged photography.

With the new exhibition – CENSUR (Censorship) – in ARoS' West Gallery, Abrahamsen has forsaken the celebrity universe. Everybody in his new series is ordinary and anonymous, but often – as in a great deal of his production – they appear naked or semi-naked. As regards his preference for naked persons, Abrahamsen states that it is related to the idea that the body, with its many marks and lines, is more expressive than the face. He is fascinated by the naked body's sensuality and vulnerability, and by the subsidence of norms that occurs when a person lets their facade down.

Per Morten Abrahamsen: Censur (2008)
Photo courtesy of ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum 

CENSUR consists of 26 large photographs showing a number of women and men in an interior, in a city space, or out in nature. All are more or less naked. The photographs are powerfully staged which, not least, underlines the fact that hanging from each person's mouth is a long side of bacon, branded with the word CENSUR. We never see the entire word – only fragments of it. The idea that it is the pig that should be blamed for the person's constipation is because the make-up of this animal is most similar to the make-up of the human being. This specific feature of the work is developed in collaboration with the visual artist Lene Nymann.

Women without Men was created between 2004 and 2008. It consists of five video installations: Mahdokht, Zarin, Munis, Faezeh and Farokh Legha, with altogether seven projections to be shown in five separately constructed spaces. The total duration of the films is c. 1:15 mins.

Neshat’s new work is based on a banned book from 1989 by the Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur. The novel is set in 1953, the year when the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, vainly tried to avert a coup d’état mounted by American and British forces, whose task it was to reinstate the Shah as an absolute ruler in order to avoid the nationalisation of the country’s oil resources. 

In her films, Shirin Neshat retains the magic realism of the novel and allows magic and the supernatural to interact with the realistic story. On the other hand, she deals freely with the novel’s action as she focuses on mood and tone in her work rather than seeking to create a straightforward film version of the novel. 

It is the five main female characters – Mahdokht, Zarin, Munis, Faezeh and Farokh Legha – that Shirin Neshat portrays in a gripping drama about power and powerlessness. The women confront the lives they have lived hitherto in different ways and seek to escape from the city to a garden, where they for a time find a refuge. For these women, life is a struggle for freedom and survival in a society that lays down strict rules regarding religion, sex and social behaviour.

Shirin Neshat was born in Iran in 1957 and had her artistic training in California during the 1970s and 1980s. On account of the Islamic revolution in her native country in 1979, she never moved back and now lives and works in New York.

The Royal Danish Orchestra
The Ballet School of the Royal Danish Theatre
The Royal Danish Ballet
Peter Ernst Lassen, conductor

La Sylphide
A sylph is an ethereal being that has inhabited European mythology since the ancient Greeks. They are born of pure air and retain their ravishing and seductive beauty for more than 300 years. Sylphs are akin to elf girls and mermaids; they are supernatural, mystical beings that pose grave danger to the souls and minds of men.
A sylph cannot be possessed and may never be touched with erotic intent, lest they lose their crystalline wings and perish.

Choreography: August Bournonville
Music: H.S. Løvenskiold
Set design: Mikael Melbye

Bournonville’s classical ballet will be performed with a poignant new creation by Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo, who most recently proved his international calibre in the Dance Mozart! program.

Choreography: Jorma Elo
Music: Vivaldi
Costumes: Annette Nørgaard