Why the World Is Watching Esben Weile Kjær

Legend has it that the dancing plague of 1518 claimed the lives of 400 victims. Although there's speculation as to whether the event even took place, its historical importance - at least in mythology and folklore - is second to none; few people know this better than Danish performance artist Esben Weile Kjær.

'I came across this event because I read popular culture studies,' noted Kjær in response to his graduate project, Mirror, based on the legendary dance-to-death which provided the spark that's set Kjær on an upwards-spiralling career trajectory since graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts' Schools of Visual Arts. The artist's latest show at Albion Jeune I WANT TO BELIEVE acts as a continuation of this through its theme, articulation of ideas and materials used to create intricate and detailed stained glass pieces.

'I'm playing around with icons and staging these performative situations that I later transform into graphic-like stained glasswork', Kjær told me, a way of working he's owned as his signature over the last year. The stained glasswork that forms the Albion Jeune exhibition doesn't just hark back to medieval crafts but is modernised by being broken up by scattered alien heads - these objects will be borrowed from the show for a performance at 180 Studios. 'The sculptures take on the role of props as symbols for ideas, ' Kjær said. 'It's a blueprint to further my own understanding to connect the dots between art, identity and commercialisation; It's a way for me to try to understand how narratives are being created in the modern world'.

Although Kjær only graduated last year, the 31-year-old artist has gained considerable attraction, performing at Arken, Copenhagen; MUMOK, Vienna; Pompidou, Paris; and Museum Tinguely, Basel, in the past year alone. After his 180 Strand debut, Kjær's I WANT TO BELIEVE will be travelling to two major art institutions in 2024 and 2025. 

Danish by blood, Kjær is currently living in New York - an experience integral to his life as an artist due to finding mass inspiration in 'The American Dream'. His ferocious curiosity is his armour, helping him to make articulate works rooted in an abstract blend of historical rituals, youth culture, and the consumerist meltdown in the West. Combining performance with stained glass as a medium in I WANT TO BELIEVE investigates our own societal relationship between today's event economy and evangelical traditions. In the press release, Kjær is quoted saying, ‘Stained glass is the old school LED screen, the traditional form of branding and advertising.’ Through just one standalone show, traditional disciplines once heralded by the arts and crafts pioneers of the 1860s, Edward Burne Jones and William Morris, are linked to figures like the grandfather of the Big Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. But how?

As is ritual with most of Kjær’s work, one performer is tasked with taking countless smartphone images, which are then reworked to form the original composition of the stained-glass work. Through this process, and enabled by the agency of the camera operator, power inconsistencies are evoked between the voyeur and the exhibitionist, just as was the case after the web in 1989 - a year credited with marking the beginning of our 'information overload' era.

As for the performance itself, Kjær has borrowed from a more futuristic ideation that centres around 'young people both falling in love with and wanting to identify as aliens'. Presented in three parts as a deconstructed baroque ballet, the work recalls a 'danse macabre', [dance of death] following a medieval motif of various characters dancing towards the grave, which served as an allegory for the inevitability of death and the impermanence of earthly things. However, Kjær is keen to stress that this is not a direct follow-on from his plague-referencing grad work, dance macabre aside. 'My graduation piece was the first time I was working with stained glass, and for me, all my works are, in some way, connected; They stand on the shoulders of each other. 'This time, I got this image in my head of these alien skull-wrecking balls swinging around, grounded in the metaphor of smashing our normative understanding of what's real. I am fascinated by how the UFO movement is portrayed in popular culture'.

Although both the show and performance present a vision that is unmistakably Kjær, I WANT TO BELIEVE would not be happening if it wasn't for the incredible creatives Kjær has called on to help. 'Thomas [de Kluyver] saw some of my sculptures at Frieze some years ago and wrote to me saying that he loved them. We then organised a meet-up in LA, and it then organically grew from there. I adore Thomas' work, and when this exhibition in London came up, I saw it as a great opportunity to work together'. There's also Laura Andraschko on the costumes -' I love her design', Kjær enthuses; then there's casting by the incredible Emma Matell, Oliver Fussing is doing the styling, photography by Casper Sejersen and Freja Wewer and last but not least, artist Europa in Flames managing the sound. 'It's just a dream', Kjær gushes. 'Some of them I have been working with for years, and others are completely new, but this work is a collaborative piece; they're as much part of it as I am.'