Christian von Hornsleth is exhibiting in Amsterdam, and there was an immediate minor riot. An organisation that raises money against trafficking in women no longer wanted to receive a contribution from the proceeds of his exhibition in Amsterdam, because the artist, whose conceptual work often features porn images, would actually be an advocate of prostitution. Something Hornsleth himself vehemently denies.
The Danish artist once became known worldwide after he was expelled from the country by the Ugandan government. The reason was a project in which he asked 100 Ugandans to change their names to his in exchange for live cattle.
So now he is in Amsterdam. I spoke to him shortly before the opening of his exhibition at the tiny Red Moon Gallery, in a side street of Warmoesstraat. (The transcription of the video is below the video.)
This is your first time exhibiting in the Netherlands?
I may have been to an art fair before, but this is the first time in the centre of Amsterdam.
You see this exhibition as a test. Why?
Yes, it's the Hornsleth test. Something like in chemistry: the litmus test, that you use a piece of paper in water to see how acidic it is. For me, if they don't get the joke, fuck 'em. But I strongly feel that the Danes and Dutch have the same sense of humour. They have their own social shit well regulated, and they have very big opinions about what happens outside their sight. In London, I was less lucky. There, they don't get the Scandinavian, Northern European joke with which we criticise existing power structures, as well as consumer culture and the industry around it.
Is that your job: to criticise consumer society?
I couldn't be more different. Every time I watch television, or open a newspaper, I ask myself: how did we get this far? I try to reflect that and I make that my work.
Now there is already hassle surrounding this opening. You were supposed to do an act, the proceeds of which would go to charity, but that charity no longer wants to participate. Why?
Part of the sales proceeds from this exhibition would go to an organisation that opposes trafficking in women. This organisation apparently read somewhere on the internet that I wanted to set up an art brothel. That was a provocatively intended thought experiment, but apparently they didn't read on after that comment. The ironic thing now is that here we are in the middle of the Red Light District of Amsterdam, in the country with the most liberal regulations on prostitution in the whole world. Even more ironically, my work is precisely a subtle critique of how we treat people in this world, and how we treat women: sexual abuse, abuse by the media... I want to see how you can be critical without becoming boring.
Looking at your work, I don't find it very shocking, honestly.
It's not about the works themselves. It's about projects I have done elsewhere.
You bought village once in Uganda.
Well, it wasn't a whole village. I made a fair trade deal with 100 people from Uganda. They had to take my surname in exchange for live cattle. So they got a cow, or a sheep or a goat on the condition that they would call themselves Hornsleth. Now, years later, they still want to keep that name. They love it. But in the beginning of the project, people allowed themselves to be provoked. The subtitle of the work was "we want to help you, but then you become our property." That was a deliberate statement, because that is exactly how the western world helps poor countries. Those countries are still poor even after 100 years of development aid. Where does the money go? It's an absurdity. I have found an amusing way to criticise that.
I also see a work with big letters "Fuck the Poor". Is that also a statement?
That was made because I marvelled at the Monaco Grand Prix. "Here we are playing nice with cars, while 3,000 people die of hunger every day." I hope to change the world a bit with such work. I see myself as a hippy of our time. This is hippie in times of facebook. You may ask if you don't get it.
Ok, I don't get it.
Ok, do you think the Netherlands is ready for my crude sense of humour?
There is a lot of debate about it at the moment. But I don't see anything here that could make anyone very difficult. I do understand that you will soon be painting a naked woman live, and then again we can hardly put that on Youtube or facebook. Of course you are controversial, as a conceptual artist. And people can be annoyed by that: that you are only controversial because it brings in money and attention.
That I do it for the sake of it? Provoking for the sake of provoking. You cannot induce a birth without chemically stimulating the mother. You provoke a birth because you want to have a child. With acupuncture, you provoke the body because you want to induce a reaction with those needles. You want to use those needles to make the body heal itself. With art, it's the same thing.
Do you have a mission?
Yes, my mission is to heal the world of all its pain and misery. And that's where we start tonight, at The Red Moon Gallery. First bid is 500 euros. We sacrifice a young woman, symbolically, by covering her in layers of paint and blood. We document that. Not that body painting is anything new. It happened a lot in the 1960s. For me, it has become something compulsive: I have to paint a naked girl at the beginning of an exhibition. It fits with all the excitement around such an opening. But it is "Art". It's also about the ideas people have about it. You wouldn't think it possible, but a lot of the work hanging here may not be exhibited in London.
Take this work with pornographic pictures of young people. This is how they deal with sex today. Group sex was still something special in the 1960s; now it is the most common thing in the world. I paint a tribute to Catholics. My work "The Price of Freedom" shows a woman's body turning into a rocket. How much sex can her body handle before she is free? That is the price of freedom. Here, the white wedding. Everyone wants to get married in white, as a virgin, so see what she does here? She is blowing someone. They want gold, but they also want a white wedding.
One of my more popular works is full of butterflies, but they all bleed. This work in the corner contains the battle cry of the ancient Vikings: "Rape, Kill, Steal, Burn!". That's what they did when they conquered Europe: first rape everyone, then kill them, then loot everything and then set it on fire. On to the next village. That's how we Westerners still treat the world.
The painting next to it depicts the primal symbol of art: Fuck You Art Lovers. If you are not fucked by the art world, you are not a true collector. Below is a painting about the dead in the porn industry. 54 per cent of what happens on the internet is related to porn, which is crazy, isn't it? The more we click, the more deaths we cause. We are clicking them to death.
Here the very famous painting by Caravaggio. I painted my own shit over that: "Fuck You Art Lovers". Art is perhaps the new religion. The only way a sane person can think about life without feeling stuffy, or believing in a Saint Nicholas. Above it hangs "The Long Road To Love". It is a series I made using quotes from Noam Chomsky on images of Western ideals. Here the quote is on a picture of one of the best missile batteries we have.
Next to it hangs one of my best works. It is an image of a painting I was not allowed to show in Germany because it contains images of European politicians as porn stars, with the text of the Declaration of Human Rights underneath. The painting itself is banned, this image is one of my best sellers.
Finally, the "Deathrow Birthday". The Chinese are slowly taking over the world. We are on death row. And you never know if you can celebrate your birthday again, because you may die in the meantime.
I see a lot of porn images. Is that such a big problem then?
No, no. On the contrary. My biggest problem is wives and their sofas, and the colour of the wallpaper.
This is your trial in Amsterdam. If it succeeds, what will you do? Sell weapons to us?
You will see that. Fortunately, you are the same as Denmark: there are no truly homeless people here.
We do have those. There is now a crisis meeting in the cabinet about that. Refugees who have exhausted all legal remedies are not entitled to anything.
That's good. I am looking for truly homeless people for my next project. In Denmark, there are no real homeless people. Social democracy rules there.
We abolished those.
I am very curious.
But how do you go about conquering the Netherlands from that tiny little gallery where we are now?
This is a very spontaneous event because the owner is a very good friend of mine. She is going to put me in touch with a lot of people.
After all, you do giant projects elsewhere, such as the sinking of a giant sculpture with the blood and DNA of 1,000 people in the Mariana Trench.
You have done your homework.
So I was a bit surprised to see you in this tiny little gallery.
I was also very surprised. But you never know where it can suddenly happen. Could be anywhere. I believe very much in coincidence. The gallery owner said: do you want to do it here, and I said: why not?
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
