2011
In Your Words is a long-term collaboration between Nanna Debois Buhl and Brendan Fernandes. The project’s research began in the spring of 2010 in Denmark where the two spent time in Rungstedlund, the home of acclaimed Danish author Karen Blixen. Often writing under the pen name of Isak Dinesen she published many books, her most famous being Out of Africa.
In Your Words consists of six collaborative videos and installations which take as their point of departure the writings of Karen Blixen / Isak Dinesen, initiating a dialogue with the author’s life and oeuvre. At the same time, this exploration into Blixen’s work becomes a reflection of the artist’s own experiences of traveling and living in different places. Ideas of identity, nationality, language, translation and exchange between the continents are interwoven with postcolonial discourse.
Located in Blixen’s home, the Karen Blixen Museum hosted the exhibition In Your Words in 2011. The project poses complex questions about our globalized world, as seen through the trajectories of Blixen herself as well as the artists. Nanna Debois Buhl was born in Aarhus, Denmark, while Brendan Fernandes was born in Nairobi, Kenya near the Ngong Hills where Blixen lived. The artists first met in New York and began collaborating on this project thereafter. They have both traveled and lived in many different places and see the significance of adaptation through their journeys. The question of identity has become very important in the work of both artists – similar to the ways in which Blixen explores these themes through her writing.