Christel Thomsen

The work Tracing Entities – Aftermath of War is a collection of different segments from a greater body of work created by Christel Pilkaer Thomsen during her mentorship at Parallel European Photo Platform as a 2nd cycle artist in 2018-19 and simultaneously during her time at MA Photography at the Royal College of Art.

Tracing Entities – Aftermath of War explores different issues of identity, memory, and representation centring around contemporary political problematics and how photography can represent and visualise these issues. First and foremost, the project wants to explore the boundaries of photography and what is possible to visualise through the photographic medium and different photographic processes.

In the first chapter, the presented work deals with trauma and healing from war especially, the psychological complications that people who have been exposed to traumatic events are faced with and the issues they are encountering on their return back home. The main focus in the first chapter is on people who have served in war and/or warlike situations.

Therefore, the project is based on personal stories and encounters with Danish veterans who are dealing with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and on collective responses to trauma. In relation to this, the work wants to explore how photography can be used as a tool to visualize the non-visible and non-verbalized woven together by the personal narratives of the subjects and abstractions created by the artist.

Through different strategies by working collaboratively and having conversations with the subjects involved in the project, through traditional analogue portraiture, documentary photography, and through abstract and alternative photographic processes, Christel creates a constant shift between figuration and abstraction.

At the exhibition at the Capa Center in Budapest, Christel has chosen to focus on one of the three veterans that she has worked with during the last year. Since the project consists of many different segments, visual strategies and perspectives, the exhibition in Budapest is to be looked upon as an encounter with the work at a certain point in time and place. The work will continue and develop in the years to come when new chapters will be created and added to the work.

Christel Pilkaer Thomsen (Denmark, 1988,) is a visual artist working with photography based in London and Denmark. In July 2019, Christel earned a master’s degree in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London and she also has a bachelor’s in Dramaturgy from Aarhus University, Denmark, 2014. Between her two degrees, she studied photography both in Denmark and Iceland. Christel’s photographic practice is a form of expanding and embodied portraiture with a focus on identity, memory, contemporary social and political issues and how photography can represent and visualize these issues.. Her projects are rooted in storytelling, staging, and perception, devising a liminal space between abstract and figurative photography.