– When I was a child, my greatest wish was to wake up with blue eyes and blonde hair.
This is how artist Lisbeth Karline describes the feeling of not fitting in that characterized her childhood. Although she has black hair, brown eyes and brown skin, she was called qallunaaq (Danish, ed.).
The experience of being between two cultures has become the starting point for the exhibition “Hybrid”, which had its vernissage at the end of last week.
The exhibition examines identity, belonging and being composed in the form of works such as photo series, clay art and paintings.
Lisbeth Karline is bent over one of her works and is looking for the right title. Around her, a controlled chaos reigns in Katuaq’s foyer. Works are scattered on the floor and lean against the walls. Coffee cups and coffee stains testify to many hours of work, while the last details fall into place.
It can be difficult to imagine that tomorrow it will already be a finished exhibition, where each work hangs perfectly, ready for the audience’s glances, interpretations and assessments.
Another task is at least as difficult: pricing the works. Lisbeth Karline doesn’t particularly care about that part.
For her, it’s not about money. It’s about identity. About finding one’s place between two cultures and creating a good relationship with both.
In the exhibition “Hybrid”, Lisbeth Karline examines what it means to be both Greenlandic and Danish. The exhibition does not provide a definitive answer, but is a personal investigation of an identity that is composed and shaped by history, culture and life experience.
Lisbeth Karline grew up in Denmark, in the countryside on Funen, until she moved to Uummannaq in the first grade. Her mother was Greenlandic and father Danish.
– There was a form of bullying where you were constantly told that you didn’t belong. Even my brother, who was born and raised in Uummannaq, was told that he had to go home to Denmark because he was fair, she says.
Lisbeth Karline says that it hurts because many people do not experience being recognized as part of the Greenlandic community.
– It’s about appearance. About the feeling of being wrong in your own body and your own skin. When I was a child and was teased that I was Danish, my biggest wish was to wake up one day, like in a Disney movie, with blue eyes and blonde hair. Then it would fit with what I was told, says Lisbeth Karline.
With humor
Guests begin to pour into Katuaq. In a few minutes, the doors will open for the premiere. Lisbeth Karline takes a deep breath.
– It feels a bit like going to an exam every time, she thinks.
She is tired after the intense work of the last few days, but also grateful. Ajunngilaq – it will work. Now the works are ready to meet the public. “Hybrid” is her fourth solo exhibition.
The first thing you see when you arrive are landscape paintings of fields, forests and trees. They lie there because they are Lisbeth’s first memories.
– I call the landscape paintings the Danish painters. After all, we have had many Greenlandic painters who came from Denmark, but were known as Greenlandic painters. The title is a little twist on who has the right to tell the story and who shapes the narrative.
She smiles.
– Imagine if I become the next Danish painter. It is said with humour, soorunami, but there is also a seriousness behind it, she says.
– I love when we can shift the perspective. It’s an interesting way to play with something that already exists, something that seems established, and tell the story in a new way, says Lisbeth Karline.
She also points to everyday products such as Medova tea and aromatics. Many associate them with Greenland, even if they do not have Greenlandic origins. For Lisbeth Karline, it shows how narratives and identity are shaped over time and how they can be challenged.
The same idea recurs in one of the works made in clay, which has its starting point in a pile of home-knit washcloths, knitted by Elisa Christiansen. A woman affected by the IUD case.
– She sat in a knitting club, where others knitted for their children and grandchildren. She never had children herself because of the IUD case. That’s why she sat and knitted washcloths. She had no one to knit for, says Lisbeth Karline.
57,000 red pearls
When you move on from the Danish Paintings, past a photo series and the Arabakaffe tower, you meet a large lump of ice that slowly drips to the floor.
The work points to the geopolitical interest in Greenland and raises a question that runs like a red thread throughout the exhibition: Who has the right to define Greenland and the Greenlanders?
For Lisbeth Karline, the works are not only about the wounds of the past, but also about a present, where others continue to try to set the agenda for what Greenland is and what the country should be.
The common thread becomes concrete in the audience’s participation.
On the floor is a long string with 57,600 red beads, one for each of Greenland’s inhabitants. The audience is invited to take the string and lead it to the ice block.
Imagine if I become the next Danish painter. It is said with humor, soorunami, but there is also a seriousness behind it
In this way, the red pearls become both an image of the population and a physical connection between the people and the country, which is the subject of such great international interest.
The work bears the telling title “It’s Not Just a Piece of Ice” and makes a point: Greenland is not just a piece of ice or a strategic area on the world map, but a country with people, history and identity.
Lisbeth Karline does not hope that the audience goes home with an answer to what it means to be Greenlandic or Danish. Rather, with a realization that identity rarely allows itself to be placed in a box.
– We are so mixed. We are so mixed. We are so hybrid. And that means a lot to me. Although of course it can also hurt sometimes, she says.
Perhaps this is exactly what “Hybrid” shows: That the composite is not a weakness, but part of the history that many people carry with them.
The “Hybrid” painting can be visited until September in Nuuk’s cultural center Katuaq.
