AARHUS.- With more than 40 series of works created by eleven young artists from different countries, Kunsthal Aarhus presents a new exhibition spread across four galleries, the café, on the stairs, and outside.

In botany, a “rhizome” is a root stem that extends horizontally throughout the ground. Unlike plant stems, which are vertical structures that receive nutrients from roots and leaves, the diverse rhizome stores nutrients, and can produce both roots and shoots. In 1987, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari used the term in a philosophical sense in their book A Thousand Plateaus (1987); that is, as a way of thinking that creates new knowledge by spreading freely, without following hierarchies or dualism. Emphasizing the organic connectedness of the whole, this rhizome is characterized by decentralization, and the ambiguous boundaries between individual zones.

Kunsthal Aarhus takes inspiration from this phenomenon in their presentation of Rhizome – Network Without Center Point, an exhibition which has been designed without any particular “theme.” In it we ask whether, in the present day, we need to point out themes in our presentation of artworks. What if we – curators, artists, and audiences – instead find them, make them, and present them ourselves, together? Should we dream of a community, society, country, and world born of both independence and collaboration? In order to experiment with this exhibition format, which does not have a central voice, the exhibition features sharing platforms that form looping networks. To build this structure means creating an open space where each of the artworks can meet and make interventions, without the constraints of boundaries such as partitions or walls.

Thus, the exhibition invites young artists from all over the world to live this phenomenon; to grow differently, rhizomatically, and to connect with others in a nonhierarchical manner. Eleven diverse, ambitious, enthusiastic, energetic, and remarkable individuals commissioned new works, or otherwise present works which have yet to be shown in Denmark.