in connection to the exhibition.On Saturday 24 October at 2 pm Galleri Image will host a book launch with Wang Ningde, the book's contributing writers Lisa A. Orcutt and Gitte Broeng as well as graphic designer Lasse Krog Møller. The artist and Lisa A. Orcutt will be participating from Beijing via video call. About the exhibition The exhibition No Name at Galleri Image revolves around photographic pieces by Chinese artist Wang Ningde, which explore power dynamics between authority and public space. Like much of Wang Ningde’s work, the pieces manifest a keen sensibility in response to contemporary issues. The artworks in the exhibition No Name are constructed with photographed paint smudges. Since 2015, Wang Ningde has visited different cities in China, photographically collecting thousands of paint smudges on public walls. The photographs depicted places where the city administration had painted over unauthorized advertisements in an attempt to conceal them. The paint smudges often stand out, as the aesthetics are not in general a priority for the city administrations. Some make an effort to match the wall, although in the end the paint is still quite noticeable and marks the tensions between the different participants in urban space.   Wang Ningde reutilises the photographed paint smudges to create new images of expressive portraits and art historical moments. In a digital editing process, he constructs with his own photographs’ new motifs on top of pictures of protesters or social events. His final step in the digital editing process is to remove the background picture completely, leaving only the vivid brushstrokes of the paint smears. Wang’s artwork then also addresses the complex entangled relation between photography and painting.   The title of the exhibition No Name refers to the nameless participants in public space, such as the unnamed citizens and nameless urban spaces. The paint smudges begin as cover-ups on the urban, social facade, then transformed by Wang Ningde to emphasise the emotional and cultural tensions in public. About the artist  Wang Ningde (b. 1972) graduated from the Photography Department at Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. He lives and works in Beijing. Wang is one of the leading contemporary visual artists in China. He is working mainly with photography and installation, using multiple forms to expand the boundaries of visual art. His artworks have been exhibited globally at galleries and art museums in USA, Australia, Asia and Europe. Wang Ningde has received numerous awards, and his artworks are included in several collections, such as the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing and The White Rabbit Collection in Sydney. For more information visit: http://wangningde.com/ During the exhibition period, Galleri Image will announce more events in connection with No Name. The events will be presented in collaboration with PhD Mette Thunø, Associate Professor in China Studies at Aarhus University and Jette Sunesen, Director of Aarhus Centre for Literature. The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, the S.C. Van Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, The Aarhus Stiftstidende Foundation, Grosserer L.F. Foghts Foundation and the City of Aarhus (Kulturudviklingspuljen)   On 2 May, 10.30 – 3 pm, Galleri Image and The China Studies, Aarhus University had planned to present the symposium Contemporary Chinese Art and Artist: Concerns, Possibilities and Constraints. The symposium was cancelled due to Covid-19, but would have featured the following guest speakers: Wang Ningde (artist), Duan Yuting (Director of Museum of Photography in Lianzhou), Sasha Su-Ling Welland (Associate Professor University of Washington). 

ent choice for both the photographic and the book media, as photobooks are perfectly reproducible and come in editions or series. However, if we think of the open boundaries of the photobook with artists’ books and the multiple, the theme becomes more multilayered and complex.Repetition in fact implies that there has been “first time”, and everything that comes after is somehow of less importance. We all know that it takes a greater effort to make something happen for the first time, and things get easier and smoother with reiteration. Seriality also implies that an original, a prototype, a maquette, has taken time, effort and wit to become what it is, before it is chosen to be produced and reproduced in a series of equal copies. The singularity and aura of the original are replaced by mechanical reproducibility, and a (more or less) democratic dissemination strategy. Not the unique printing plate, but the entirety of the copies of an edition is the quintessence of printed matter. In other words, the book is not the sum of its pages, but the multiplicity of and wholeness of all its printed copies.In Galleri Image, we will present the special photobook exhibition Intimacy and Resistance, an intergenerational dialogue on photobooks from South Africa with additions from Sub-Saharan Africa. The exhibition is curated by John Fleetwood and includes works by Ernest Cole, David Goldblatt, Drum, Lebohang Kganye, Zanele Muholi, Jansen van Staden, and Eric Gyamfi.The festival will also present exhibitions by curators such as Lars Blunck, José Luis Neves, Nina Worren, Per Bak Jensen and Tamara Berghmans.Other events this year include a Bookmaking Workshop with paula roush and our yearly Sunday Bookmarket, with photobooks from 50 different publishers, bookmakers and booksellers. You can look forward to a wide range of exciting exhibitions, talks, book markets, tours, and book presentations on locations throughout the city centre of Aarhus.This year, the festival will once again be part of Art Weekend Aarhus. Read more about Art Weekend Aarhus at https://artweekend.dk/Photobook Week Aarhus 2020 is supported by the City of Aarhus (Kulturudviklingspuljen), Dreyer's Foundation, Augustinus Foundation, Instituto Camõe and the Portuguese Embassy, the Nordea Foundation, Sonning Foundation and the Obel Family Foundation.Read about the PWA and this year's program at http://photobookweek.org/ or on Facebook and keep up with the latest updates on Instagram. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Since 2014, Galleri Image and the Aarhus School of Architecture have collaborated on organising Photobook Week Aarhus. PWA focuses on the rapidly growing international interest in photobooks in recent years and represents a continuous study of the evolution and role of the medium. The festival is curated by national and international experts under the leadership of Chief Curator Moritz Neumüller and the curatorial team: Anne Elisabeth Toft, Beate Cegielska and Jesper Rasmussen.PWA presents the photobook to the general public and to individuals who work professionally with photobooks and photography, be it from an artistic, communication-related or academic standpoint. User involvement, openness and dialogue are key words when it comes to the form and content of the festival. For this reason, PWA has placed great emphasis on inviting a large number of exhibitors and speakers who can present the photobook in a cross-disciplinary perspective. This has made it possible to exhibit significant but rare photobooks that have been discussed by researchers, photographers, leading curators, architects, representatives of The Danish School of Media and Journalism, and many other qualified contributors from around the world.

rowing hair. It is producing saliva, sweat, warmth. All these simultaneous processes function so we can put our energy into activities that exist outside the body, yet require its presence.Hestnes’ exhibition Spare Parts is a series of compositions: Grotesque everyday situations, pinpointing the disconnect between our physical and mental selves. An attention to the body that we otherwise rarely give. Hestnes is inspired by the nature morte tradition and the vanitas motifs of Baroque art, where the depiction of objects in a state of depravity and decay is central. Loose body parts linger between object and abject, simultaneously repulsive and present. There is a brutality to the realisation that you have a body.We are eyes, faces, lungs, hands. We are bones and blood. We are arms and legs. But we are also made up of parts that we don’t even know the name of. We are intestines that have surface areas as large as tennis courts. We are cuticles. We are busy bacteria. And one day this bustle stops. You are tendons, nails, nerves, tissue. Fragile. An abattoir of parts in a brittle construction, neatly packaged in skin to hide its dull grey brown colour. Tired livers. Stubbed toes. Mitochondria. We avoid going to the dentist because we are afraid of what they will find – a fault in our health and a reminder that we have abused it. Spare Parts is a grotesque toast to our health. To our belly buttons and our wrists and to our bunions. To all our parts that work beautifully and have nothing to spare. To sit and think about our lungs inflating and deflating. Inflating. Deflating. Inflating. Deflating. And how they will continue to do so, until they don't. About the artist:Freya Sif Hestnes is a visual- and performing artist, working in Denmark and Norway. She has a background in photography, scenography and in being injured. Through video, installation and performance, she explores how personal stories can find a place in the collective. Hestnes examines the world through small stagings of reality where humor, absurdity and sensory experience merge into documentary and autobiography. Here, everyday objects often appear as markers of the complex relationship between humans and their material environment.Freya Sif Hestnes has a BFA in photography from Valand Academy (SE) and a degree in scenography from the Norwegian Theatre Academy (NO). Since graduating in 2017, she has exhibited at galleries throughout Scandinavia and toured in large parts of Europe as a performer and scenographer in her own productions. Hestnes is a present figure in the independent performing arts field as well as institutional theatre in Denmark, most recently as a scenographer in the Reumert-nominated performance "Brøgger" at Teater Republique. The exhibition is supported by the city of Aarhus (Kulturudviklingspuljen).