The Association of Professional Artists and Craft Artists – ProKK – in collaboration with the curator Trine Rytter Andersen.


With the ambiguous title I create (MYSELF) – ErGO sum – the artists have been urged to take their point of departure in the self-portrait, a classic artistic format with a long tradition behind it. Only a few of the exhibitors use the photograph as the primary medium in their own art. In this context the artists have been challenged to use the camera in an attempt to create a self-portrait.

The eye and not least the camera are our favourite instruments for looking at ourselves – and at others. Never have we been so familiar and intimate with the use of photographic media. Never before have we been so relaxed, experimental and boundary-breaking both in front of and behind the camera. The social media manifest a multi-faceted photographic game where we stage ourselves and are staged by others with clear references to the formats of popular culture.

We reflect ourselves in mass culture, and this affects the way we see ourselves. The many pictures we take show us in a variety of roles and milieux. Today our ego is a malleable, ambivalent entity. The question is then how the artist, in a world where everyone is a photographer and the flood of images flows more rapidly than ever, can contribute to this photographic game in new and specifically artistic ways. Has the role of the artist changed? Can this be seen in the self-portrait?