Banu Cennetoğlu, BEING SAFE IS SCARY, 19 March – 10 August 2025
Experience the first presentation in Denmark of t he Istanbul-based artist Banu Cennetoğlu. Her works showcases a keen interest in how the production and distribution of text and image-based information shape our world.
Banu Cennetoğlu’s practice often involves extensive collecting, cataloguing and archiving of materials, which subsequently manifest in carefully composed works with wide-reaching perspectives. By processing various types of textual and visual materials, she examines the function of such signs, their politics of memory, and the underlying interests or power structures they reveal.
Through a series of works, the exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg moves from societal issues to more intimate spheres. Critical investigations of the daily press, the migration flows through Europe and the UN Declaration of Human Rights are brought to dialogue with an extensive private image archive, connecting the small and large events of everyday life with urgent global issues.
Banu Cennetoğlu (b. 1970, Ankara) has exhibited at prestigious international shows, including Documenta 14, the Liverpool Biennial, the Gwangju Biennial, the Istanbul Biennial and the Berlin Biennial. She represented Turkey alongside Ahmet Öğüt at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009.
BEING SAFE IS SCARY is curated by Henriette Bretton-Meyer and Katarina Stenbeck.
The exhibition is part of HUMAN:RIGHTS – a new collaboration between Kunsthal Charlottenborg, CPH:DOX and Human Rights Watch Denmark with support from the Frececo Foundation. The exhibition is also supported by the Augustinus Foundation, Danish Arts Foundation, and the Obel Family Foundation.
