Dialog på tværs af tid

In this ongoing artistic project, I explore an invisible connection through time, lineage, and materiality. My starting point is my grandfather, Louis Hauer (1888–1954). He grew up in a family of artisan painters in Altona/Hamburg, emigrated as a young man to Copenhagen, and supported his family there as a cigar sorter while painting seascapes as a supplementary trade. We never met, and he never lived to know that I was on my way into the world. Through an artistic transformation of his legacy of maritime motifs, I am attempting today to initiate the conversation we never had the chance to share.

The centerpiece of my investigation is my grandfather’s oil painting of the ill-fated, five-masted barque København, which vanished without a trace in the South Atlantic in 1928. Louis Hauer painted the vessel in the 1930s, during a time when the tragedy still weighed heavily on the maritime consciousness. In my search for his history, I acquired two editions of the exact same motif painted by his hand—one in its original, patinated gold frame, the other also an oilpainting, but professionally cleaned and restored. The juxtaposition of these two physical objects opens an artistic paradox regarding the passage of time, conservation, and the loss of an artwork’s original “soul.”

This digital studio presents the initial visual sketches and spatial mockups of the project. Through a series of 16 digital transformations and physical giclée prints, I deconstruct my grandfather’s classic, marine composition.

The artworks examine how a single motif can mutate, be remembered, and be renegotiated when confronted with my own contemporary, conceptual, and feminist perspective on natural forces, colonial history, and national symbols.