HANNE NIELSEN (1959) & BIRGIT JOHNSEN (1958) - live and work in Aarhus, Denmark.
MFA Jutland Art Academy
Hanne Nielsen & Birgit Johnsen are an artist duo (since 1993) working internationally with video media, documentaries and installations, who in recent years have carried out a number of public decorations where video, sculpture, spatial relationships and objects interact.
Their work spans from minor single screens to major filmic productions, studio recordings and documentary explorations activated in audience-encompassing total installations.
Hanne Nielsen and Birgit Johnsen work conceptually, focussing strongly on the global, political reality, highly conscious of the fact that media images and video media in general are a power factor in our society. They are preoccupied with the borderlines between fiction and reality and how our social behaviour and subjective positioning relate to historical and present-day issues.
Hanne Nielsen & Birgit Johnsen’s work springs from perceptions of a changing world where absolute truths are non-existent.
They are the recipients of numerous awards, most recently the Ny Carlsberg Foundation’s artist award, the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen award and the prestigious Eckersberg medal. In 2021, they received the lifetime grant from the Danish ArtS Foundation.