Katrine Skovsgaard

Hi, I'm Katrine!

Who are you?

I am an artist, co-creator, workshop facilitator and collaborator.

I'm interested in the spaces between us, how we share or, more often, do not. My art practice investigates ways to reveal subjective sensory experience, especially those personal experiences we do not talk about and those we do not notice. My research is located at the crossroads of shame, chronic pain, sharing and mutual radical care.

I often work with other people to find new languages for experiences that we find hard to share. In this piece of writing, I invite you to reflect on a few questions from my practice.

For years, I hesitated to share my story.

What do you share with others, and how?

What would you hesitate to share? 

The initial reluctance I felt about sharing, when faced head-on, became a catalyser for not only my own, but for many other people's sharing stories of vulnerability. This enquiry started with a willingness to ask questions I didn't know the answers to. The work instigated conversations I'd never had before. Through my art, I now intend to spark more of these conversations, intimate moments, sharing, and most importantly, the feeling of being safe to do so.

When and where do you feel safe?

What do you imagine the tactile surface of safety feels like in your hands?

Memory reveals what touch already knows.

I currently explore notions of intimacy through touch-based art and radical sharing narratives in text and sound. For example, in my piece, Touch, a tapestry installed as a semi-circle creates a room-within-a-room, a calm environment to listen to an audio component with a choir of stories sharing emotional or challenging experiences with hands. Maybe these stories bring up experiences of your own?

Would you share these stories with a stranger? Or a friend?

It can be hard to collectivise and confront the loneliness that some experiences give us.

How do you ask for help in your life? Who are your allies?

I examine how we can provide embodied safety for each other and how that might 'materialise', emotionally as well as physically. Dealing collectively with the challenging aspects of being human is an important and revolutionary practice that current, interpersonal and social systems and structures do not support. I want to bring about the world that emerges when we come together around the inherently tough and awkward experiences of being human.

How can WE start to think about doing this?

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I want to thank everyone who has provided invaluable help, and who I have worked and thought with on the projects displayed here, especially: Adri São Bento, Anita Agarwal, Bea Grant, Belinda Nors, Chloe Langlois, Effy Harle, The Hologram Community, Jens Ole Krarup Hansen, Justin Piccirilli, Kamilla Askholm Jørgensen, Louise Uth Pedersen, Louise Ørsted Jensen, Sean Clancy, Veronika Geiger and everyone in the Social Practice Group.