Jette Ellgaard, (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Jette Ellgaard is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts 2007. Her practice is rooted in an investigation of the shifting cultural identities of the rural area of Denmark where she grew up. Using mostly video, sound, text and photography Ellgaard’s practice pictures her own mix of biographical attachments to this region, which are complicated through her estrangement from the prevailing economic and political developments in the region since she has moved to Copenhagen. The ambivalence of feeling attached to and alienated from a place at the same time is pictured with great clarity in her work. At the same time the presentation is neither prosaic or overly self-referential – Ellgaard’s work has a strong sense of its audience, often using colloquial language, and at times referencing contemporary events to lend an immediacy to her references. Her interests and investigations mostly centre around everyday life, human relations, family structures and generations related stuff, which perspective universal subjects, as history, time, identity, the human existence, the cultural and social background and the relation between the individual and the surrounding society.