Art and cinema - Screening of Blue and guided tour at PoMo
Catherine Opie has drawn significant inspiration from artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman, and their artistic practices explore many of the same themes. In collaboration with PoMo and Cinemateket, we therefore invite you to a guided tour of the exhibition Catherine Opie – Mountains Don't Know Their Names, followed by a screening of Jarman's film Blue.
When: Saturday 28 November
Guided tour: 5:30 PM at PoMo
Film screening: 7:00 PM at Cinemateket
The guided tour lasts approximately 45 minutes. You can purchase a ticket for both the guided tour and the film screening, or for the film screening only.
“It’s also thinking about how the history of blue is used in art. Thinking about Picasso’s Blue, Derek Jarman’s film Blue, Cerulean Blue in terms of painting, Italian Renaissance. Like what does that blueness hold and why do we, why do we seek it, and why is both dawn and dusk so important for the idea of beginnings and endings.”
– Catherine Opie in an interview with Marc-Christoph Wagner for Louisiana Channel, January 2024
Blue (1993) is the final feature film by artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman, released just months before his death from AIDS-related complications. Through the film, Jarman expresses his resistance to the prejudice and lack of political engagement surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic at the time.
In the film, the colour blue reflects how Jarman lost his sight due to AIDS, leaving him seeing everything in shades of blue. The blue screen is accompanied by voices that portray life with the illness through everyday stories and poetic metaphors.
Catherine Opie is known for photographing people and communities that have often been overlooked or excluded from public discourse, including the LGBTQ+ community in Los Angeles, of which she was herself a part. At PoMo, you can experience both a dedicated gallery featuring key works from her artistic career and the exhibition Mountains Don’t Know Their Names, which grew out of a 20-day road trip through the Norwegian winter landscape.
During her journey, Opie photographed Norwegian mountains in the distinctive blue light. The exhibition explores, among other things, how we as humans try to understand the landscapes around us by giving them names, stories and meaning.
