At the Academy of Fine Arts, a number of characters have come to rest after a seemingly arduous journey. Along corridors and in exhibition halls, they hide, awaiting the grand opening and subsequent closing. The end of an era and their sheltered existence.

The figures are my creations that emerged from a methodology that I developed during this year's artistic research in camouflage. A search that has taken me to museums and libraries around Europe, and created collaborations with thinkers and creators across world borders. Research outside the academy has left the gates ajar for figures to creep in. Right now they lie like cuckoo eggs in the cool halls, incubated by the country's best conservators and property managers in the belief that the works are part of the building and have always been so.

But what snow covers and hides, thaw will reveal. These poor bastards who have made the academy their home will be singled out and most likely condemned. At the end of August, an installation will be erected that functions like a lens to see the hidden. Until then, I invite your eyes to look for my figures in the premises.

The staff had suspected but said nothing until someone in the office exclaimed:
– the air is better now!

Still, the sigh of a cupboard and the groaning of the walls were heard.
If the years pass and I remain, who am I then?

The evenings come faster and faster with the birds blushing on the horizon.
A visitor takes my arm just before closing and asks:
– Can what is not visible really become an exhibition? And in that case, are you an artist if you don't exhibit?

Joakim Derlow received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2016. He is currently a fellow at the Bernadotte Program at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, which the exhibition Hidden in snow is a part of.

Picture: Abbott H Thayer / © Joakim Derlow/BUS 2023