Collection

Henrik Olesen (born 1967)

Henrik Olesen (born 1967 in Esbjerg) is an artist who, in his works, examines the structures of power and knowledge, showing their inner logic and rules of the social and political standardization. All his projects are based on thorough examinations of legal structures, biological sciences, capital distribution and individual stories of people and events which diverge from or interfere with standards. One of the most significant subjects raised in Olesen’s works is criminalization of homosexuality, the most acute example of which is a series of the artist’s works (collages and objects) that make up a historical and imagined portrait of Alan Turning, the famous British mathematician and distinguished cryptologist accused of violation of “public morality” and sent to undergo hormone therapy, the aim of which was to change his “abnormal” sexual orientation (and which ended with his suicide).

Artist's works in the Collection