October 24, 2023–January 1, 2024
roda—soft water on hard stone
The curators Katarina Stenbeck and Carla Zaccagnini receive The Vision Exhibition Award 2023 for their exhibition idea roda—soft water on hard stone. With a focus on knowledge building and worldmaking, roda charts a new course for art exhibition and production by proposing an extended collaborative process interweaved with three oceanic journeys that reverse the colonial triangular route between Africa, South America and Europe.
roda—soft water on hard stone is an invitation to engage in collective thinking about ways of inhabiting the world in the face of accelerating interlaced crises engendered by colonial, patriarchal and extractivist logics. In Portuguese “roda” means wheel and also circle of people, a formation where different practices of sharing, imagining and performing take place. Evoking the many meanings of this word, roda—soft water on hard stone is an exhibition process on how to develop sensibilities of co-existence across worlds that can guide us towards new ways of learning, living, making and believing.
The process is structured around three thematic cycles, the first one is dedicated to reciprocity, the second focuses on (re)production and distribution while the third addresses spirituality. With an emphasis on the value of art as slow considered gestures, the process will unfold as three sea journeys with a Landing Programme of activities in Rio de Janeiro and Lagos alongside nine art commissions and the event programme - Glossary on Wisdom & Worldmaking in Denmark.
With a firm belief in the potential of art to generate new ways of thinking, the two curators, Katarina Stenbeck and Carla Zaccagnini, emphasize the necessity to confront the Eurocentric worldview rooted in colonialism and capitalism in order to imagine worldmaking beyond the Western logics of domination.
Travelling by sea in the opposite direction of the colonial triangular trade route, artists and other practitioners will be invited to consider the implications of the global flows of people and natures that have radically transformed the planet since the 16th century, and still echo in the ongoing exploitation of the Global South. It is an attempt to open up histories and world views, to think about expanded communities and kinship across the boundaries of species and oceans. The direction of the colonial trade route is reversed in a symbolic action of de-learning, as a gesture to confront the logic of eurocentrism, and disturb the notion of linear time. The journeys function as intensive collective knowledge-building sessions, from which material and immaterial results are shared in each of the three port cities with local partners.
roda—circles of human and more-than-human worlds
The exhibition process is based on international collaborations with the art organisations Capacete in Rio de Janeiro, CCA, Àsìkò in Lagos, Astrid Noacks Atelier and Art Hub in Copenhagen and the M/S Maritime Museum in Denmark. By connecting these partner institutions, the participating artists and other practitioners the project forms its own roda, a circle, across the globe for exchanges on reciprocity, reproduction and spirituality.
Stay informed about the development of roda—soft water on hard stone: roda-softwateronhardstone.org/
About the Vision Exhibition Award
Every year, with its Vision Exhibition Award, Bikubenfonden invites museums, exhibition halls, independent curators and other exhibition actors to realize a visionary exhibition concept with contemporary relevance. A jury consisting of professionals hailing from relevant sectors evaluate all the submitted proposals. Three of the ideas are then invited to be considered in a second round, where participants are asked to further develop and qualify their ideas. The final recipient of the award is granted up to five million Danish kroner for the realization of the exhibition.
In 2023, the jury of the Vision Exhibition Award was composed by
-Gitte Ørskou, director, Moderna Museet, Stockholm
–Hannah Heilmann, artist, art historian, associate professor at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen
–Sigrid Bennike, scenographer and director of Torden & Lynild, Copenhagen
–Tine Vindfeld, art consultant
–Jonas Snedevind Nielsen, architect and co-founder of Perspektiv
–Peter Kirkhoff Eriksen, former senior development partner, Bikubenfonden
Motivation from the jury
“What makes roda—soft water on hard stone such an innovative art mediation idea is the fact that it examines and develops urgent, abstract themes in an extremely tangible and original way. On sea journeys that travel in the opposite direction to the original triangular route between Europe and the former colonial continents of South America and Africa, the process will invite non-European artists and other thinkers to reveal a shared history and worldview in new ways.
The exhibition idea, and the development and presentation of the works to audiences will create a process that combines both the physical and mental journey. It is a radical approach that the bodies and community of the participants will play a role during the voyage at sea, which will also explore the transformative potential of the maritime.
As an experiment, the concept changes the very framework for the emergence of new ideas and new art. roda—soft water on hard stone also involves an innovative way of engaging audiences as participants in the process, and they can encounter the final exhibition of the newly commissioned works in Copenhagen. Finally, we believe that those who are given the opportunity to work together will be immersed in a special, protracted process, during which something significant may emerge.”
Previous recipients of the Vision Exhibition Award
2022: The Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, for the exhibition, Hosting Lands. Between the Ruin, the Field and the Forest
2021: Copenhagen Contemporary, for the exhibition Yes, it Moves!
2020: Kunsthal Rønnebæksholm, for the exhibition Soil. Sickness. Society.
2019: Kunsthal Aarhus, for the exhibition Go Extreme
2018: KUNSTEN. Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, for the exhibition Work it Out!.
2017: Esbjerg Art Museum, for the exhibition concept Wunderkammer.
2016: The performance artist group, Sisters Hope, and Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, for the exhibition Sisters Academy—The Boarding School.
2015: The Medical Museion, for the exhibition project, Mind the Gut.
Read more at The Vision Exhibition Award
Further information
Jeppe Bo Rasmussen, T +45 2440 1897 / jbr@bikubenfonden.dk
Head of Public Affairs and Communication, arts, The Bikuben Foundation
Curator Katarina Stenbeck: katarina@roda-softwateronhardstone.org
Curator Carla Zaccagnini: carla@roda-softwateronhardstone.org
