Dura Mater
The Dura Mater series is based on an extensive archive of photographic material from Lysholt Hansen’s performance for camera practice, encompassing test prints, contact sheets, and digital or silver gelatine prints of performative studies, sketches, documentation and finished works. The series was begun spontaneously in 2016 as a collaboration between Lysholt Hansen and her daughter, who painted and drew on the archive material. In the course of 2017 she lost interest, and the series ended in 2018 with one last image. In all there are 470 photographic objects.
Dura Mater presents the series in its entirety for the first time, and accompanies it with texts by invited authors who offer possible readings and new perspectives.
Performance theorist Peggy Phelan and artist Mel Day discuss co-presence and co-creation in relation to particular images in the series.
Cultural theorist Tina Kinsella writes about photography, loss and the mother-child relationship in Freud, Barthes and Bracha L Ettinger.
Cultural theorist Irina Aristarkhova explores the critique of representation and the mother’s pleasures in relation to Dura Mater, and also incorprates Lysholt Hansen’s performance texts.
Nanna Lysholt Hansen also contributes with a performative text in which she appropriates material from a conversation with the author Kirsten Thorup about mothering and artistic practice, as well as fragments from Thorup’s, Inger Christensen’s and Luce Irigaray’s works.
Also presented is a selection of poems from Kirsten Thorup’s debut collection Inside – Outside (1967), which reflects some of the themes discussed. The poems are translated into English for the first time.
304 pages, 24 x 28 cm, RSS Press, 2025
470 full colour images
Texts in English and Danish
The Dura Mater series is based on an extensive archive of photographic material from Lysholt Hansen’s performance for camera practice, encompassing test prints, contact sheets, and digital or silver gelatine prints of performative studies, sketches, documentation and finished works. The series was begun spontaneously in 2016 as a collaboration between Lysholt Hansen and her daughter, who painted and drew on the archive material. In the course of 2017 she lost interest, and the series ended in 2018 with one last image. In all there are 470 photographic objects.
Dura Mater presents the series in its entirety for the first time, and accompanies it with texts by invited authors who offer possible readings and new perspectives.
Performance theorist Peggy Phelan and artist Mel Day discuss co-presence and co-creation in relation to particular images in the series.
Cultural theorist Tina Kinsella writes about photography, loss and the mother-child relationship in Freud, Barthes and Bracha L Ettinger.
Cultural theorist Irina Aristarkhova explores the critique of representation and the mother’s pleasures in relation to Dura Mater, and also incorprates Lysholt Hansen’s performance texts.
Nanna Lysholt Hansen also contributes with a performative text in which she appropriates material from a conversation with the author Kirsten Thorup about mothering and artistic practice, as well as fragments from Thorup’s, Inger Christensen’s and Luce Irigaray’s works.
Also presented is a selection of poems from Kirsten Thorup’s debut collection Inside – Outside (1967), which reflects some of the themes discussed. The poems are translated into English for the first time.
304 pages, 24 x 28 cm, RSS Press, 2025
470 full colour images
Texts in English and Danish
The Dura Mater series is based on an extensive archive of photographic material from Lysholt Hansen’s performance for camera practice, encompassing test prints, contact sheets, and digital or silver gelatine prints of performative studies, sketches, documentation and finished works. The series was begun spontaneously in 2016 as a collaboration between Lysholt Hansen and her daughter, who painted and drew on the archive material. In the course of 2017 she lost interest, and the series ended in 2018 with one last image. In all there are 470 photographic objects.
Dura Mater presents the series in its entirety for the first time, and accompanies it with texts by invited authors who offer possible readings and new perspectives.
Performance theorist Peggy Phelan and artist Mel Day discuss co-presence and co-creation in relation to particular images in the series.
Cultural theorist Tina Kinsella writes about photography, loss and the mother-child relationship in Freud, Barthes and Bracha L Ettinger.
Cultural theorist Irina Aristarkhova explores the critique of representation and the mother’s pleasures in relation to Dura Mater, and also incorprates Lysholt Hansen’s performance texts.
Nanna Lysholt Hansen also contributes with a performative text in which she appropriates material from a conversation with the author Kirsten Thorup about mothering and artistic practice, as well as fragments from Thorup’s, Inger Christensen’s and Luce Irigaray’s works.
Also presented is a selection of poems from Kirsten Thorup’s debut collection Inside – Outside (1967), which reflects some of the themes discussed. The poems are translated into English for the first time.
304 pages, 24 x 28 cm, RSS Press, 2025
470 full colour images
Texts in English and Danish
Dura Mater – Nanna Lysholt Hansen
304 pages, 24 x 28 cm, RSS Press, 2025
470 full colour images
Texts in English and Danish
Contributions by Peggy Phelan & Mel Day, Kirsten Thorup, Tina Kinsella, Irina Aristarkhova and Nanna Lysholt Hansen.
Published with support from the Danish Arts Foundation, Committee for Visual Art, the Danish Art Foundation, Committee for Literature, the New Carlsberg Foundation, and the Beckett Foundation.