Louis Schou-Hansen: Tragedy

This dreamscape takes the shape of an entrapment, a labyrinth without walls, a site where Western cultural tropes from the baroque until now take shape as disordered compulsions: lap dances, star-crossed lovers, cowboy fantasies, dying swans, court des ballets, still lives, and Hollywood sex. Tragedy is a non-emotional burial ground for an undying history—a form of time in decay.

In 2019, artist and theorist Alina Popa wrote in one of her final essays, “The body is real, but what we think about it is fiction.” While alluding to the “real” as the material properties of the body, such as flesh, bones, blood, skin, etc. Popa also points to the body as a disciplined container where complex fictional realities are cultivated until they penetrate our skin and stick to our flesh as something true. Drawing on an expanded interpretation of Popa’s 2019 quote, Tragedy explores the body and its surroundings as a complex network of destructive Western fictions where all of us become violent agents of a dying world.

Louis Schou-Hansen (b. 1992, Aarhus, Denmark) is an artist and choreographer whose practice explores the oppressive processes through which living bodies are made into subjects, with a focus on the anti-queer and colonial connotations of this transformation. Drawing on personal experience, history, and counter-history, Louis investigates embodied fictions, queer desire, the mechanics of sex, and mortality. They hold an MFA from the Dutch Art Institute and a BA from Oslo National Academy of Dance (KHIO). In 2023, they were shortlisted for the Sandefjord Kunstforening Art Prize alongside Harald Beharie for their project Shine Utopians at Dansens Hus in Oslo. Louis’ work has recently been presented at venues such as the ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (UK), NADA – New Art Dealers Alliance, New York (US), Dansehallerne, Copenhagen (DK), Centrale Fies, Dro (IT), Black Box Theater, Oslo (NO), My Wild Flag, Stockholm (SE), and Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest (RO), among others. In 2024, they co-founded the annual, parasite performance festival MIND EATER together with Runa Borch Skolseg.