LLSSOSPM
KURHUSET SCT. HANS
Lille Solstråle Sad og Så På Månen is a collaboration between Lise Haller Baggesen, composer Anders Lauge Meldgaard and the choir BARK, conducted by Lasse Aagaard. The performance and installation was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, for Kaååraåålines Vers, a first ever art museum exhibition featuring loans from Museum Sct. Hans, centering the lifework of Karoline Ebbesen.
Kaååraååline, Kaoline, and Karåline
Despite a prolific body of work, Karoline Ebbesen (1852-1936) has remained largely overlooked in Danish art history. The exhibition introduces a selection of Ebbesen’s works across various media, showcasing her unique practice. Best known for her textile pieces and her use of stitches as ornamentation in paper collage, she also worked extensively with drawing and calligraphy, rendering a naive, yet deep and dark, cosmology. Ebbesen’s writing is often phonetic, and she signed her name in multiple ways such as: Kaååraååline, Kaoline, and Karåline.
The exhibition places Ebbesen’s works alongside pieces by Danish and international contemporary artists, including Lise Haller Baggesen, Gudrun Hasle, Georgina Maxim, and Matilde Duus, who have found kinship and inspiration in Ebbesen’s textual and visual universe.
Kaååraåålines Vers also features newly commissioned works inspired by Ebbesen. Lise Haller Baggesen presents Lille Solstråle Sad og Så På Månen, a textile and sound installation referencing Ebbesen’s notebooks. In collaboration with composer Anders Lauge Meldgaard and the 40-member choir BARK, Baggesen transforms Ebbesen’s rhythmic and poetic language into a textile and sound installation, and a live choral performance, to be staged at the exhibition opening as well as at this year’s Roskilde Festival.
Read more about the exhibition Kaååråålines Vers here. Scroll down for more Lille Solstråle...
Photography: Lise Haller Baggesen and David Stjernholm (Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde)
Simone Ballan, Sandra Borch, Kristoffer Kirketerp and Andreas Merrald (Roskilde Festival '25)
THE SPACE
Sarah Söderholm describes the installation in (Danish newspaper) Information:
"When you enter the exhibition, you walk up a flight of stairs and are greeted by a lot of bright and decorated dresses (which turn out to be disposable gowns with embroidery on them) hanging from the ceiling, and by the sound of a choir singing.
The dresses and choir appear like floating angels welcoming us, my friend sits devoutly on the steps with her six-week-old baby in her lap, and I really think she just sits down to enjoy a moment of peace and rest while the baby sleeps, until I see that she is crying.
The work is titled »Little Sunbeam sat and looked at the Moon« (2025) and is a collaboration between visual artist Lise Haller Baggesen, composer Anders Lauge Meldgaard and the choir BARK. For the exhibition opening, the work was performed live, with the choir standing behind the balustrade at the top of the staircase, wearing their gowns/robes.
Now the dresses hang or fall from the ceiling while the choir plays from hidden speakers, and the angels are angels, but they are also apparitions. It is an easy work to fall into because I think it reminds us all of something. My friend cries because she sits with her little ray of sunshine in her arms, at the same time as she carries a great sadness in her heart, and I am moved because the Moon was my old friend who took her own life, and who appears as a friendly apparition in my thoughts several times during the exhibition."
The entire review of Kaååråålines Verses can be found here (in Danish)
ROSKILDE FESTIVAL '25
THE VOICES
Lille Solstråle Sad og Så På Månen was co-produced by Roskilde Festival (Denmarks biggest music festival, in case you are not familiar :))
It was our unbridled pleasure to premiere the piece with two performances at the PLATFORM stage, as part of the festival's 2025 Art & Activism program.
https://www.roskilde-festival.dk/en/art-activism-guides/space-for-diversity
The performance was received overwhelmingly positive, by the assembled crowd as well as press coverage in (amongst other) Sceneblog, The Lake Radio and Politiken Popcast. But my favorite was Ida Skibsted Cramer's thoughtful review in Passive/Agressive, in which she summarized the experience thus:
"Like being in a glittering sun house full of sorrow – blissful and solitary. The choir sang the outsider's voice with great solidarity, and the artists behind it managed to show how within the simple poetry, the naive aesthetics, there is great seriousness and a deep night."
https://passiveaggressive.dk/elske-vil-jeg-og-leve-glad-om-lille-solstrale-sad-og-sa-pa-manen/
