100% Copenhagen exhibition at Danish Cultural Center

DCC in Beijing shows exhibition on happiness: 100% Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the official Guest City for Beijing Design Week 2018, and in connection to that Danish Cultural Center in Beijing presents the photo exhibition 100% Copenhagen by Maja Nydal Eriksen. Beijing Design Week allows Chinese audiences and design professionals to experience new concepts for life-style, sustainable living, recycling, community empowerment. This year’s theme is “Living and Giving”, and DCC will play a pivotal role in the activities, which is also the reason for showing this upcoming exhibition, which runs till mid-August.

100% Copenhagen

100% Copenhagen is a look at the Danish capital from a different angle than the usual rankings which place Denmark on the top of any ‘happiness index’. By asking the citizens of the ‘the best city in the world’ what is most important to their individual well-being, it highlights issues which normally don’t appear in the conventional surveys. An alternative “happiness” report of the Danish capital indeed, but also a fascinating mental map of a city in search of meaning, identity and happiness.

The portrayed people are ordinary citizens who demographically represent the city’s population based on various statistics. Yet, each of the persons reveals an individual standpoint “representing” the most important social issues from a highly personal perspective: Lifestyle, Work, Relationship, Wealth, Discrimination, Urban Situation, Sustainability, and Diversity. The final result might render a fuller and more covering representation of our complex and continually changing urban society, than we are normally able to grasp.

The interviews and photographs are the result of three-hour talks with each portrayed person. In every single case, the artist Maja Nydal Eriksen used their homes as the scenic setting for the photo. The concept behind 100% Copenhagen stems from a documentary theatre performance at The Royal Danish Theatre in 2013 by German theatre collective Rimini Protokoll and presented by Metropolis, Copenhagen International Theater.

The exhibition is designed and produced by Danish Cultural Center with support from SC Van Foundation and Nordgreen.

Photos and text: Maja Nydal Eriksen, graphic design: Elisavet Papageorgiou and Tang Sai.