ØDELAND

Signe Fensholt
Christina Schou Christensen
Thora Finnsdotti

The exhibition runs until October 11th, 2025

For millennia, we have drawn freely from the Earth’s riches. We humans have squandered resources as if they were endless. But the raw materials used in ceramics are non-renewable.
Ceramics are made from clay and minerals extracted from the earth’s crust. These are geological deposits created in prehistoric times. We are already seeing that some raw materials are no longer available, making well-adjusted formulas unusable.
Are there alternatives to the virgin resources we dig from the ground?

Every year, enormous amounts of ceramic waste are discarded — tiles, pots, plates, toilets, and bricks. While most glass is recycled today, even that process produces residual waste. In the quarrying industry, by-products are often discarded as waste.
Can all this waste be reused to produce new ceramic objects?

That’s what we set out to explore, and this exhibition presents the results of our experiments. We've integrated these investigations into our artistic practice, and most of the works you see here are made from waste materials.

WASTE AS A CERAMIC RESOURCE
In our studios, we have crushed ceramic and glass waste, sieved it, calculated new blends, and fired the results. But if the future of ceramics is to be based on waste as a resource, the effort must scale beyond individual studios.
That is why we've established a collaboration with BOFA, Bornholm’s waste sorting facility, to develop a model for recycling based on local circular economy.

Every year, 380 tons of ceramic waste are discarded on the island. A large part of this is sanitary ware — sinks and toilets. We have chosen to focus on this specific waste stream.
But what is a toilet made of? Does the material contain harmful chemicals? How can it be tested? How do you crush it to a workable grain size? Can a municipal company handle packaging and distribution? And who is allowed to collect it?

Our collaboration has reached a phase where collection, testing, crushing, and sieving have been completed in a trial period. The next step is developing a business model: acquiring the necessary equipment and setting up a dedicated workstation as part of the waste sorting company’s in house activity.

At the exhibition ØDELAND, Signe, Christina and Thora showcase experiments and outcomes of their work with recycled materials.

The exhibition is supported by: the Danish Arts Foundation (Statens Kunstfond), Danmarks Nationalbank’s Anniversary Foundation, HEPHAESTUS (the Horizon Europe craft project), BOFA, and the Esther and Jep Fink Memorial Fund.