After months of research in JP/Politiken Media Group's extensive photo archive, Danish visual artist Maja Malou Lyse invites reflection on the power and role of media archives in shaping our collective understanding of the past. In her exhibition BOMBSHELL, BOOM!, Lyse has particularly focused on the archive of Ekstra Bladet’s Page 9 Girl—a feature showing semi-nude women—which has appeared daily in the Danish tabloid for nearly 50 years, reflecting evolving depictions of sexuality and gender.
In 2022, the Page 9 archive became a subject of debate when it was revealed that many of the models were under 18 years old when photographed. In response, Ekstra Bladet announced plans to destroy the images but retracted the decision after resistance from the models. They argued that erasing the images would be to erase an important part of history and instead called for a say in the fate of the photographs. Today, the images are stored in a locked cabinet.
Lyse exposes this dilemma with a framed email from one of the models and blurred outlines of the censored Page 9 Girls, exactly as they appear in Ekstra Bladet’s digital e-archive. Alongside a ready-made piece in the form of a locked archive cabinet, Lyse explores the archive as both a repository of memory and a site of resistance against contemporary cultural norms.
As our political and moral compasses evolve, Lyse disrupts the archive’s status quo, posing the questions: What should be done with a media history that no longer aligns with contemporary ethics, where past narratives clash with present ideologies? By bringing the hidden images and furniture into the light without revealing their contents, the artist underscores the paradox of the archive’s existence: although it is concealed, it remains inaccessible, rendering its contents simultaneously present and absent. The notion of the hidden within the cabinet and the body behind the blur mirrors the dynamics of eroticism, where what is unseen often holds more weight than what is revealed.
As the exhibition’s title suggests, female autonomous sexuality has often been viewed as explosive, a notion encapsulated by the term bombshell, used to describe an attractive woman. This also surfaced during Lyse’s research in the archive, where she discovered the section labeled Namsler—a mixed category of images related to sexuality. Here, she found photographs of anti-pornography protests with Playboy magazines being burned. Side by side lay nude photos with faces crossed out, leaving only torsos visible, thus erasing the agency of the depicted women. In contrast, a set of female eyes now gaze over City Hall Square. Lyse has invited a current Page 9 Girl to take over the light banner on JP/Politiken Media Group at the Copenhagen City Hall Square. The model, long familiar to Danish audiences, now gazes back at us, as though she were the house’s eyes.
The commission is part of a three-year collaborative project between Politikens Forhal and the City of Copenhagen. It will also be shown at Sydhavn Station from early next year on a billboard near the railway tracks, where it will remain until summer 2025.
Maja Malou Lyse graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2022 and has exhibited at venues such as Kunstmuseum Brandts, ARoS, and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, and performed at the National Gallery of Denmark, Moderna Museet, and Tate Modern. In 2023, she received the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Talent Prize.
The exhibition and commission are supported by and created in collaboration with: Det Obelske Familiefond, The Danish Arts Foundation, and Copenhagen City Municipality.
Photos: Jan Søndergaard.