Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen’s uses film, photography and sculpture to address vital global issues. For the past decade a substantial part of Larsen’s research has been focusing on migration and issues arising from it. 

For his first solo exhibition in Portugal, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen brings to Galeria Presença his latest film production Quicksand - recently shown in “Tensão e Conflito” at MAAT, Lisbon. Quicksand is set in 2033. It tells the story of Jason, a man fighting for his life in the Mediterranean Sea. The film amplifies tensions within present day Europe and imagine a near future where EU has collapsed. It is against this backdrop that Jason, a husband and father has decided to join the exodus of people who try to leave Europe. Jason’s journey ends when the boat he is in capsizes and he and many other European migrants are struggling to survive.

Larsen also premieres new prints from his ongoing work The Floating Series, that takes its departure in photographs taken in the Parisian neighbourhood of Stalingrad, which in late 2016 saw more than two thousand migrants living in the street. He took a series of portraits of people covered with blankets, and imagined that the fleeting moments where migrants were able to sleep, were the only parts of their current lives where they could ease their exhausted minds and bodies and metaphorically float away from their hopeless situation. The blankets are often adorned with patterns, words or symbols that contribute their own narratives to the images and perhaps to the people behind them. The motifs are retouched and make the textures of the fabrics allude to chiaroscuro paintings. This adds significance and importance to the portrayed, who are most often depicted in degrading situations, which retains them in the position of ‘the Other’.

*Texts from the catalogue of "Tension and Conflict: video art after 2008" (ed. Pedro Gadanho and Luísa Santos, MAAT) and from special edition of Contemporânea Magazine 'Artivism = Capital' - project of the Curatorship Students, from the international MA and PhD on Culture Studies from the Lisbon Consortium, Portuguese Catholic University, lectured by Luísa Santos.