Collega

Press release

Collega was founded in 2022 by Lotte Løvholm and presents exhibitions developed in collaboration with international artists and curators. Departing from co-curation as practice, each collaboration embraces the methods and interests of the invited partner. In 2024 Lotte Løvholm invited Jari Malta to take the role as Collega’s artistic director. This expansion follows the ethos of Collega, opening paths for new collaborations and broadening the networks of the organisation.

Collega comes from Latin colligere which means to gather. In the essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” (1986) by the feminist science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin, the carrier bag is praised as the first human technological invention. Le Guin describes how modern society is built around heroic tales that pay tribute to the hunter and his spear. The gatherer, on the other hand who patiently walks around nature and collects berries and grains, does not have the same heroic status, but is more fundamental to human survival.

Collega like Le Guin emphasizes non-heroic storytelling and slow gatherings as a resistance to the outward thrust of our techno-progressive narratives.

Collega emphasises the collective process in exhibition-making as a patient gathering of works – on loan, in care, as nourishment. Where Le Guin uses the image of the carrier bag and the gatherer to foreground how we tell stories, the exhibition space can similarly function as a container that emphasizes slowness, colleagueship and non-linear narratives. Collega dwells on the cave, the storage chamber, the net, the bag, the sling, the belly, the exhibition space and the womb.

One of the main elements of Collega is an insistence on facilitating exchange and dialogue between the Danish art scene and international curators and artists. By weaving together the local and particular in a
global context, the desire is to insist on multiplicity.