At Eye Level with the Art of the Faroe Islands
/Kinna Poulsen
While Kalaallit Nunaat and the visual art emerging from Greenland is in the spotlight at the moment, with a wide range of exhibitions in various venues, there is less attention being paid to the Faroese part of the Danish Realm, and to culture and art in the Faroe Islands. Although in some places in Denmark outside the Copenhagen area—and particularly around artists’ associations—there has been a certain interest in Faroese artists, it has been a long time since Faroese art, in the true sense of the word, was in demand in Denmark. Indeed, perhaps the last time was back in the 1940s, when Sámal Joensen-Mikines exhibited paintings, which Danish critics regarded as major works of Nordic Expressionism. Faroese visual art has certainly not stood still; on the contrary, it is a field that has undergone a tremendous development, one that seems to have passed Denmark by.
As a curator, I have had the pleasure of arranging a number of exhibitions both at home in the Faroe Islands and internationally, including at exhibition venues in Denmark. Yet these have rarely taken place outside institutions with “Nordic” in their name. For example, we have held several exhibitions of contemporary Faroese art at Nordatlantens Brygge, and Greenland has done the same. But Greenland has come into the spotlight in a completely different way in recent years, with exhibitions at all kinds of prominent venues, from Statens Museum for Kunst and Copenhagen Contemporary to the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Faroese art, by contrast, no longer seems to gain entry into the inner circle of the Danish cultural elite.
The great interest in Greenland has its geopolitical reasons, as we all know, but it also seems to have arrived none too soon. At least, that was the impression one got from Inuuteq Storch’s exhibition at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Rise of the Sunken Sun, which was poetic, moving, and extraordinarily successfull. The Faroe Islands have not yet participated in the Venice Biennale, primarily because of our own lack of initiative. Nor has there been any interest yet on the Danish side in a Faroese representation in the Danish Pavilion in Venice.
I have previously expressed my surprise at the lack of focus on Faroese visual art at major institutions in Denmark, such as Statens Museum for Kunst. For example, in an exhibition entitled The World as Landscape – Nordic Landscape Painting 1840–1910 (Verden som landskab – Nordisk landskabsmaleri 1840–1910, SMK 2006), that it was possible to leave out Faroese paintings altogether. Although Faroese—and Icelandic, for that matter—art only emerged around the turn of the twentieth century, there are works from that period by pioneers such as Flora Heilmann and Niels Kruse in the Faroe Islands and Þórarinn B. Þorláksson in Iceland, who painted their surroundings with great national affection.
There have been other similar group exhibitions where contributions from the Faroe Islands could have been included, had there been a will to do so, and there has likewise been little interest in exhibiting individual Faroese artists in these places. I once approached Charlottenborg and the National Gallery of Denmark to ask whether they might be interested in an exhibition of Faroese art. The friendly answer was that they were not. I was not entirely unprepared for this response, and it only irritated me slightly—for how can one know that one is not interested in something about which one has no fundamental knowledge?
This has puzzled me, even though I do not at all believe that there is any hostility behind it—merely a lack of knowledge and perhaps a general tendency towards centralism, whereby the Faroe Islands are perceived as being somewhere beyond the very periphery and therefore as somewhat more provincial and uninteresting?
A pertinent question in this regard is whether, from a Danish perspective, there is any reason whatsoever to take an interest in the visual art of a distant country that is a two-hour flight from Denmark. The answer can quickly become political and involve the Danish Realm and “big sister” Denmark’s obligations towards her “smaller” siblings in the north. But perhaps the question would be easier to approach if we started from our shared history and the natural curiosity and mutual interest in one another’s art, culture, and society that follows from it.
The times call for solidarity and cooperation in Europe, the Nordic countries, the Arctic and whithin the Danish Realm—a fact that even the most passionate Faroese republican must acknowledge, while at the same time one can dream of an enlightened community based on respect for each other’s sovereignty.
Among Faroese people, Denmark is more present than the Faroe Islands are for Danes. For many of us, Denmark is a kind of second homeland. Many Faroe Islanders have close family, friendships, and professional ties with Danes, as well as personal experience of Denmark across numerous areas of life, including education and healthcare. Art is no exception, and there are countless connections between the Faroe Islands and Denmark. Through important Faroese cultural institutions such as the Nordic House and Steinprent, the Faroe Islands Graphic Workshop, we all benefit from collaboration with outstanding Danish and Nordic artists. Similarly, the National Gallery of the Faroe Islands has received support from Danish foundations for several acquisitions and projects, including the major renovation of the art museum, Listasavn Føroya. Last but not least, Denmark is the largest recipient of the Faroe Islands’ most important resource—namely, our young people. We lose around twenty percent of each age group; most leave because of their studies abroad, and Denmark is by far their most common destination, although our young people have also gradually begun to seek out university cities in other countries.
Culturally and art-historically, Denmark, and Copenhagen in particular, has had a major influence on Faroese art. It was here that the first generations of Faroese artists were educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and it was likewise in the Danish capital that they organised exhibitions of Faroese art—the first in 1941, at the Nørrebrogade studio of the Faroese sculptor Janus Kamban. Exhibitions of Faroese art in Copenhagen became a regular feature and attracted considerable interest. Their purpose was to showcase the very best of Faroese art, or at least what was thought likely to generate the greatest interest among Danish viewers, and these were primarily paintings interpreting the natural landscape.
It is possibly this double perspective that has led to a kind of lag and a discrepancy between contemporary art in the Faroe Islands and exhibitions of Faroese art in Denmark, with a strong emphasis on Faroese nature depicted through modernist painting: so-called “Færøkunst” featuring sky and sea and small houses in vivid colours, which remains popular among Danish cultural tourists visiting the Faroe Islands. The few times exhibitions of Faroese visual art receive coverage in the Danish media, they are viewed through a lens of nature, which seems reductive. In reality the field is considerably more complex, today Faroese art is as varied and multifaceted as contemporary art in Denmark—and, indeed, in Greenland, where there is abstract visual art and other forms of visual expression that are not particularly concerned with Greenlandic identity.
It seems like Greenlandic contemporary art is, in a sense, under pressure—caught between American neocolonialism and Danish or Western postcolonial expectations of what Greenlandic art should look like. Nivi Christensen, director of the Nuuk Art Museum, has argued that Greenlanders themselves should be allowed to define and shape the conversation about their own art history, rather than being subject to expectations imposed from outside.
This is still about what the Greenlandic-Danish artist Pia Arke very precisely summed up in the concept of “ethno-aesthetics,” which has gained renewed relevance in recent years—including at the Venice Biennale, where an apparent openness towards small Indigenous peoples, minorities, and cultures is accompanied by an unspoken demand for a clear sense of ethnic authenticity in art. For example, there is an expectation that Sápmi or Greenlandic artists will produce works that reflect their specific cultural identity. If they don´t, their work is not perceived as authentic. What initially appears to be genuine interest can therefore, in reality, become a limitation. Pia Arke argued, in short, that ethno-aesthetics is a colonial tool that reduces complex, modern people to living museum objects, whose role is to entertain Western audiences with their “authenticity.”
In a world that assigns value to art according to a hierarchical understanding of centre and periphery, and in which works from the periphery are also expected to bear a distinct indigenous or primitive character, Faroese visual art will always fall short. For in the Faroe Islands, visual art as such has never been “indigenous.” We have a very small number of examples of early folk art and a rich craft tradition, in which the processing of wool, knitting, and boatbuilding in particular have played a vital role throughout history. But from the very beginning, Faroese visual art has been inspired by art and international movements, just as Faroese visual artists have generally been well informed about developments in the international art world and are often educated abroad.
Faroese art history is relatively young, since we only really got started in the twentieth century and spent a number of years depicting our surroundings through national-romantic imagery, which subsequently became modernist, inspired by Paris via the academy in Copenhagen. But in this century, contemporary art in the Faroe Islands has undergone a rapid development, resulting in a highly diverse overall field. Non-representational painting has been flourishing since the turn of the century, with outstanding works by several eminent painters. Nature remains a strong presence, both in the older artists’ expressive interpretations of the grandeur of the landscape and in the way younger artists incorporate natural materials differently—both more directly and poetically, and informed by a sustainable and climate-conscious approach.
We live in a time of transition, in a period that is still swirling around us, strangely indistinct and sticky, with endless reasons for perpetual anxiety, but also with a new kind of openness that can be sensed in several places and that could prove interesting with a view to an exchange between Faroese and Danish art. A genuine breakthrough for contemporary Faroese art in Denmark is still a long way off and would, to begin with, require a change in attitude: Danish art institutions would need to muster both the interest and the willingness to get to know and understand Faroese art, and to encounter it on an equal footing and without prejudice, regardless of the islands’ size and their position within the Danish Realm. In short: to meet Faroese artists with the same openness, trust, and respect that is shown to all the other complex contemporary artists of the world.
Kinna Poulsen is a Faroese critic, curator, author, and teacher based in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands. In November, she will give a lecture at Nordatlantens Brygge on Faroese art, based on her book At Eye Level – On 21st Century Contemporary Art in the Faroe Islands. https://www.nordatlantens.dk/da/arrangementer/2026/i-%C3%B8jenh%C3%B8jde-foredrag-ved-kinna-poulsen-om-faeroesk-samtidskunst/
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