Kunsthal Charlottenborg

For decades, the Kenneth Balfelt Team has tackled a range of societal challenges, working with everything from drug consumption rooms to prisoner’s self-development while using the methods of art. Together with Johan August, they now focus on performance anxiety and stress among young students in Denmark as they invite the audience to take part in their new project Sowing the Seeds of Love

A recently published report known as the National Health Profile 2021 reveals that the mental health of Danes is in sharp decline, including that young people in Denmark are affected by stress to a greater extent than before. Sowing the Seeds of Love is an art project comprising four stages of development, all aimed at using artistic practices to find solutions to issues of performance anxiety and stress among young students.

Socially committed and participatory in scope, the exhibition is set in two specially designed architectural pavilions inside the courtyard of Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Here, all interested parties can stop by to explore a range of artistic methods used in previous projects by the Kenneth Balfelt Team. Visitors can also take part in the creation of the new art project through workshops held in the exhibition pavilions. With this approach, Sowing the Seeds of Love gives visitors insight into artistic processes that are not normally visible to audiences.

As part of the project, the Kenneth Balfelt Team // Johan August collaborate with University College Copenhagen to investigate the possibility of creating new social and physical initiatives that can counteract the growing stress levels experienced by young people today. Here, students, teachers and professionals from University College Copenhagen’s teacher programme will take part in interviews and workshops side by side with the audience.

The development process will end with a ‘vernissage’ held on 30 June from 17.00 to 22.00, where the results will be presented to the visitors and the University College of Copenhage. The results will subsequently be on display until the exhibition closes on 7 August 2022.

Over the course of the last decades, the Kenneth Balfelt Team has developed artistic methods and theories aimed at solving specific, real-life societal problems. They have worked with everything from drug consumption rooms and homeless shelters in Copenhagen to prison inmate programmes in Niger and Norway. For four years now, the Kenneth Balfelt Team // Johan August have researched and developed initiatives that can prevent stress in our society, cities and working lives.

Sowing the Seeds of Love at Kunsthal Charlottenborg represents the next stage of the Kenneth Balfelt Team // Johan August’s contribution to the exhibition Work it Out at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg in 2021, which was about facilitating de-stressing and meaningful meetings. Here, the pavilion offered an alternative kind of meeting room with a relaxing atmosphere, one where nature is invited inside in a specially designed architecture whose organic forms, natural sounds, plants and stones creates a setting reminiscent of a garden and a greenhouse for human growth. Supplemented by a programme of social activities, this setting offered means and methods for holding de-stressing, more meaningful and creative meetings.

The exhibition Sowing the Seeds of Love was realised with generous support from Profile A / S, Scantruck, Chr. Juul Andersen A / S, Regnestuen, Vandkunsten, Atelier Kristoffer Tejlgaard, the City of Copenhagen, Riisfort A / S, Ege Carpets, Skagerak, Bymarkant, Deichmann Planter and the Augustinus Foundation, the Beckett Foundation, the Obel Family Foundation, the Knud Højgaard Foundation, the Politiken Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation, the William Demant Foundation and the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation.