Press release -
Video works focus on rights struggles at Kunsthal Charlottenborg
Disobedience Archive (The Open Storage)
19 March – 10 August 2025
Official opening: 20 March 16.00–20.00
The exhibition Disobedience Archive (The Open Storage) presents a wide-ranging collection of video works that, through different historical, geographical and social perspectives, map various artistic resistance tactics from the 1970s onwards. The exhibition is part of the HUMAN:RIGHTS initiative, focusing on human rights, and is presented in collaboration with the CPH:DOX film festival.
Invitation to Press preview: Wednesday 19 March 11.00–12.00
Kunsthal Charlottenborg invites to a press preview of the exhibition, where curator Marco Scotini will be present to introduce the show. To register and request interviews, please contact: jmh@kunsthalcharlottenborg.dk.
Following the press preview, the exhibition will open to the public in connection with the launch of the CPH:DOX festival on 19 March. The official opening reception will take place on 20 March, with the programme to be announced in early March.
Disobedience Archive is an extensive and ever-growing collection of films depicting nearly fifty years of social struggles across different parts of the world. The project explores the relationship between art and political action by looking at how resistance movements are translated into moving images in a form of artistic visual activism.
Curated by Milan-based Marco Scotini, and since its inception in 2005, the archive has presented hundreds of video works across fifteen countries. Unlike the often static and inflexible nature of traditional archives, the Disobedience Archive is mobile and shifting. Each time the archive is exhibited, it unfolds a new thematic focus and in a new spatial articulation.
The exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg is presented in an installation developed by visual artist Christopher McSherry, which mimics the visuals typical of an art storage facility and thus refers to the history-critical function of archives.
With the title Disobedience Archive (The Open Storage), the exhibition features four overall themes: Radical Ecologies, Diaspora Activism, Gender Disobedience, and Insurgent Communities highlighting a wide range of rights struggles. Radical Ecologies examines climate activism through both activist interventions and visionary future perspectives. Diaspora Activism addresses transnational migration processes, which is seen here as a struggle for survival that fosters new ways of inhabiting the world while challenging the nation-state system and its citizenship. Gender Disobedience focuses on the rejection of heterosexuality and binary gender constructions, forging alliances between the global LGBTQ+ movement and anti-capitalist positions. The works in Insurgent Communites revolve around anti-systemic rebellions that take the form of creative activities and initiatives that create counter-publics and new political solidarity-based communities.
By drawing connections between otherwise separate struggles for justice, the archive makes it possible to see them within a broader political context across time and place. Disobedience Archive (The Open Storage) is a form of active history writing that insists on art and visual culture as a crucial part of the struggle for a better world.
Featured artists:
Alberto Grifi, Angela Melitopoulos, Navjot Altaf, Ravi Agarwal, Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA), Ursula Biemann, Ege Berensel, Seba Calfuqueo, Simone Cangelosi, Chto Delat, Mao Chenyu, Critical Art Ensemble, Ali Essafi, Marcelo Expósito, Grupo de Arte Callejero, Grupo Etcétera…, Maria Galindo e Mujeres Creando, Barbara Hammer, Atelier Impopulaire, Khaled Jarrar, Sara Jordenö, Sanjay Kak, Karrabing Film Collective, Bani Khoshnoudi, LIMINAL & Border Forensics, Carlos Motta, Daniela Ortiz, Paloma Polo, Oliver Ressler, Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett, Roy Samaha, Güliz Sağlam, Sim Chi Yin, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Mohanad Yaqubi, Pınar Öğrenci
Disobedience Archive (The Open Storage) is part of HUMAN:RIGHTS – a new collaboration between Kunsthal Charlottenborg, CPH:DOX, and Human Rights Watch Denmark. With support from the Frececo Foundation, the initiative will focus on human rights in the coming years. The exhibition is also supported by the Augustinus Foundation, The Obel Family Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation.
Films in the exhibition
Gender Disobedience:
Maria Galindo e Mujeres Creando, Revoluciòn Puta, 2023 (51’40’’ )
Ege Berensel, March of Women, 2018 (27’)
Marcelo Expósito with Nuria Vila, Tactical Frivolity + Rhythms of Resistance, 2007 (39’)
Carlos Motta, Corpo Fechado – The Devil’s Work, 2018 (24’33’’)
Güliz Saglam, 8 Mart 2018 – Istanbul / 8th of March, 2018 (6’)
Seba Calfuqueo, Nunca serás un Weye. You will never be a Weye, 2015 (4’46’’)
Barbara Hammer, History of the World According to a Lesbian, 1988 (16’ 24’’)
Simone Cangelosi, Una nobile rivoluzione: Ritratto di Marcella Di Folco, 2014 (83’07’’)
Sara Jordenö, Kiki, 2016 (93’48’’)
Radical Ecologies:
Oliver Ressler, The Path is Never the Same, 2022 (27’)
Sanjay Kak, Words on Water, 2002 (85’)
Critical Art Ensemble, Radiation Burn: A Temporary Monument to Public Safety, 2010 (12’30’’)
Ravi Agarwal, The Flower Pluckers, 2007 (3’33’’)
Navjot Altaf, Soul Breath Wind, 2014-2018 (62’)
Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Juliet Kepes Stone and BUG (Boston Urban Gardens), 2011 (42’)
Mao Chenyu, I Have What? Chinese Peasants War: The Rhetoric to Justice, 2013 (103’)
Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA), Au Rez-de-chaussée de la ville, 2005 (34’)
Karrabing Film Collective, The Family and The Zombie, 2021 (29’23’’)
Insurgent communities:
Paloma Polo, El Barro de la Revolutión, 2019 (120’8’’)
Ali Essafi, Wanted (Al-Hareb), 2011 (20’)
Grupo de Arte Callejero, Plan Nacional De Desalojo, (2’); Shopping para artistas, (1’); Desalojarte, (1’); Invasion, (3’); Lanus, (3’); Aqui Viven Genocidas, (10’), 2001-2003
Khaled Jarrar, The Infiltrators, 2012 (6’)
Grupo Etcétera…, Contrabajo Synfonia, 2005 (10’)
Alberto Grifi, Il festival del proletario giovanile al Parco Lambro, 1976 (30’)
Roy Samah, Transparent Evil, 2011 (27’)
Chto Delat, Partisan Songspiel. A Belgrade Story, 2009 (29’15’’)
Mohanad Yaqubi, R21 aka Restoring Solidarity, 2022 (71”)
Diaspora Activism:
Bani Khoshnoudi, Transit(s): Our Traces, Our Ruin, 2016 (40’12’’)
Sim Chi Yin, Requiem (Internationale, Goodbye Malaya), 2017 (6’08’)
Pınar Öğrenci, Inventory 2021, 2021 (16’)
Ursula Biemann, Sahara Chronicle, 2006-2009 (33’14’’)
Angela Melitopoulos, Passing Drama, 1999 (66’14’’)
LIMINAL & Border Forensics, Asymmetric Visions, 2023 (10’54’’)
Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett, B.A.T.A.M (Bila Anda Tiba Akan Menyesal) - When You Arrive You’ll Regret, 2020 (43’01’’)
Daniela Ortiz, Empire of the Law, 2019 (30’)
Atelier Impopulaire, Before We Love, Act 2: 12 Gates, 2024 (30’)
Practical information
Disobedience Archive (The Open Storage)
19 March – 10 August 2025
Press preview: 19 March, 11.00–12.00
Official opening: 20 March, 16.00-20.00
Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Kongens Nytorv 1, 1050 Copenhagen K
Read more here
For more information about the exhibition, please contact:
Henriette Bretton-Meyer
Acting director, curator, Kunsthal Charlottenborg
hbm@kunsthalcharlottenborg.dk / (+45) 3374 4680
Press contact
Jeannie Møller Haltrup
Head of Communications, Kunsthal Charlottenborg
jmh@kunsthalcharlottenborg.dk / (+45) 3374 4629
Categories
Kunsthal Charlottenborg is one of the largest and most beautiful exhibition spaces for contemporary art in Northern Europe. The exhibition space presents an ambitious program with international outlook featuring talents as well as established stars from both Denmark and abroad. The exhibition program is supplemented with a large number of activities like artist talks, performances, concerts and film screenings.
