Karen Havskov Jensen

I was born 1963 in the town of Holstebro in Denmark and I am an educated sculptor from the Funen Art Academy (Det Fynske Kunstakademi) in 1993. I have made independent as well as several group exhibitions and projects in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, Spain and Japan. Since 2001 I have together with Klavs Weiss been organizing and carrying out the activities of ET4U – Contemporary Visual Art Projects in West Jutland, and in 2006 I also moved back to the countryside after 24 years in the city. In my art practice I work primarily with sculpture, and cardboard, textiles and other ‘light’ materials have been my preferred. The sculptures most often contain elements of something recognisable like fragments of landscapes, architecture and the human body. Also in their choice of material and idioms the sculptures often play on well-known expressions and conventions – a cardboard suitcase for children’s toys has for example been a recurrent accessory and I have a preference for traditional needlecraft techniques – but put into a new context so that the recognisable thing often seems to have been turned inside out. By this I try to create personal emblems of mental structures and states. My starting point is a search of identity and of the human existence.