Angelica Mesiti - Mother Tongue

An Aarhus 2017 Commission and Part of Coast to Coast

Internationally acclaimed artist, Angelica Mesiti, makes a new commission for our cultural year. This moving image work considers an urgent and persistent question: How do we best live together? A question that is relevant on a personal and private level and at the global geo/political scale. 

From a contemporary European perspective this question has a particular and pressing poignancy, but this enquiry has also been a specific question in Denmark since the 1960’s, explored through public policy and urban development projects. Mesiti will work with a range of people from different backgrounds to depict the variety of ways life is being lived in Denmark and Europe across a range of circumstances. 

She investigates the newly arrived peoples who have entered into Aarhus, as well as more settled communities from outside the EU who have made Denmark their home. One focus will be on the housing project, Gellerup, that was built as a ‘new town’ in 1967 based on a modernist utopian model of functional housing for families, which is now colloquially referred to as a ‘Ghetto’. 

Mesiti’s works seek to explore the many ways we communicate and interact. In this work, the role of languages, and music specific to the participants will be foregrounded. The new commission will be exhibited as part of a major survey of works.

Read more about the venue 'O'-Space here.

About Coast to Coast
Aarhus 2017 is putting art Coast to Coast in a series of works and projects that bring some of the world´s leading artists to the Central Denmark Region. These site-situational, context specific and special exhibitions are made as new commissions for townships, art spaces and across municipal borders.

In our European Capital of Culture year we also commemorate the 500 Year Anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, so we explore the ‘word’ through a series of new text and sound pieces by some of the most highly acclaimed conceptual artists exploring philosophy, homilies and idiomatic language.

And in our year in which we examine our Danish DNA within the European context, artists help us reflect upon society in flux through transient gestures and atmospheric installations.

Supported by the Obel Family Foundation, 15. Juni Foundation and Købmand Herman Sallings Foundation