Politikens Forhal invites you to the opening of Making Sense as I See Glimpses of Beauty, an exhibition by the award-winning young artist and architect Aysha Amin, whom has previously exhibited at the Berlin Biennale as an artist in her own right, as well as at the Venice Architecture Biennale with the art and architecture platform Andromeda(8220), which she founded and has directed since 2017 in Gellerup. Now Amin takes over Politikens Forhal with an extensive floor print, shimmering curtains and a large-scale video installation featuring a soundtrack created in collaboration with music artists Hari Shankar Kishore, Mija Milovic and Ryong.
Our stories about ourselves are often shaped in relationship to the environments in which we have become who we are. But what happens when we can no longer access the places we once came from?
As both a visual artist and an architect, Aysha Amin is interested in how architecture shapes us and the world around us. Thus, in her exhibition Making Sense as I See Glimpses of Beauty, she explores how we remember through our surroundings, and what happens to our capacity to remember when we no longer have access to the places to which our memories are tied.
A large floor print entitled In Memory and Movement II depicts the railway tracks on which Amin’s grandmother was born – in a train travelling through Kolkata. The tracks encircle a 3D-scanned floor plan of an apartment in Gellerup, the social housing estate where Amin grew up. Around it, the path of the sun unfolds, marked by the five daily prayers in Islam – a cosmic movement with which we engage on a daily basis.
On the other half of the entrance hall floor lies a fragmented LED installation. Here, the 22-minute video work Mellem Himmel og Jord II (Between Heaven and Earth II) is screened, accompanied by a soundtrack created in collaboration with music artists Hari Shankar Kishore, Mija Milovic and Ryong, and where the sound is activated as visitors approach the screens. Without revealing where the footage was recorded, the work follows the perspectives of two filmmakers – the artist and her father – as they move through time and space, with the landscape and architecture serving as silent witnesses to their respective journeys.
In the furthest corridor, a section of the media house’s former LED billboard displays a love letter written by Amin. In the back room, a shimmering curtain alludes to a pilot renovation project in Block B7 of the Gellerup social housing estate, where curtains were pre-installed as an integral part of the building following lengthy political discussions about the more flamboyant curtains traditionally hung by families in the area. In this way, Amin reminds us that, as human beings, we inevitably inscribe ourselves in our surroundings, just as our surroundings become inscribed in us.
Aysha Amin (b. 1996) is the recipient of the Solo Prize at Aarhus Art Prize 2025, awarded by ARoS, Godsbanen, Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus Visual Arts Centre and Jyllands-Posten. She received the prize, among other things, for her work with the platform Andromeda(8220) in Gellerup, which she presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale. She has also exhibited as a solo artist at the Berlin Biennale, Nikolaj Kunsthal and Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Arts.
Aarhus Art Prize and the exhibition are supported by: Jyllands-Posten's Foundation, Købmand Herman Sallings Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation and the City of Aarhus' Cultural Development Fund. Sponsor: Bornholms Kildevand.