Pia Arke (1958-2007) used her dual ethnicity in Greenland and Denmark as a point of departure for powerful and poetic works, that delve into Danish colonial history and her personal journeys and kinships.
She died at an early age and did not experience the steadily increasing international interest in her art. Central to her mainly photographic oeuvre stands the artist’s dual ethnicity in Greenland and Denmark, and her work plays consciously and with great relevance on relations within the Danish Commonwealth.
Pia Arke’s art can be regarded as an expedition to the areas which in an extended sense constituted her identity, history and the mechanisms that form a human being’s sense of belonging. With her art and in writing she engaged in what she herself described as ‘ethnoaesthetics’, and in the Danish context her project represents an important and early example of post-colonial thinking.
Source: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art