A closet does not connect under the bed

A closet does not connect under the bed (2016) is a series of 20 unique woodcut prints that investigates the closet as both metaphor and object. In these works cabinet pieces are deconstructed into squares, lines and rectangles which are reassembled in sprawling compositions. Meanwhile fragmented texts relating to desire and secrecy are penciled onto the prints, highlighting the significance of the closet as the metaphorical hiding-place for deviant sexualities and gender identities. In the woodcuts, the familiar shape of the closet disintegrates, and becomes instead blueprints for something entirely third and unknown. The title is lifted from the poem A Substance In A Cushion by the experimental modernist writer Gertrude Stein. Here, abstraction is used to evade straight forward signification, thus protecting the privacy afforded by the closet, while simultaneously breaking down its suffocating constraints, daring to imagine radically different modes of being.

In the exhibition at Overgaden Institute of Art in Copenhagen 2016, the woodcuts were accompanied by an untitled suite of sculptures (also 2016) made up of twelve concrete casts of various elements of old wooden closets.

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