In the years 2001-2010, after her graduation from The Royal Danish Academy, Thyra Hilden (b. 1972) was a highly productive visual artist with a certain reputation on the international art scene. She was acknowledged for her symmetric photos, but even more so for the ongoing project City on Fire, projecting fire on cultural monuments, at the Copenhagen Cathedral, the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, and not least the World Heritage Site Colosseum in Rome; but also in Gdansk, Germany, Seoul, Ukraine. The art installation City On Fire was settings the stage by the opening of the exhibition REFLECTION on Pinchuk Art Center Kiev together with the artists Antony Gormley, Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Christian Marclay, Sarah Morris, Marc Quinn, Sam Taylor-Wood, Piotr Uklanski, Gabriel Orozco, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Peter Doig, Richard Phillips, Vasyl Tsagolov, Illya Chichkan & «Blue Noses», Serhiy Bratkov, Arsen Savadov.
The CITY ON FIRE artworks have been widely internationally exposed through BBC, CNN, Euronews, Associated Press, RAI and many other TV channels.
2020 – today Thyra Hilden works with SYMETRIC oil paintings. According to research, Thyra Hilden is the first in art history to make large symmetrical Rorschachs in multiple colors. Her monumental symmetric paintings can be seen here >>
Stephanie Holmes BBC NEWS: “Rome on fire, and Colosseum, one of the 7 wonders of the world, set alight. yet not, the flames leaping within this ancient arena is an illusion. An installation created by 2 danish based artists. The blaze is nothing more than video trickery, using some of the biggest projectors in the world.
Curator Gianni M. “People say that there is nothing more mythical than fire, but I doubt, there is nothing more mythical than Colosseum. It represent a moral and ethical message.”
Romans on the way home this weekend, couldn’t quite believe their eyes. But this is an idle fire, the artist day they wanted to highlight the importance of our cultural herritage.
Visual artist Thyra Hilden: “When we choose a monument or an cultural institution for our project and burn it, the fire is a kind dialogue with the monument. So the monument has this heavy symbol, content and significance”
This is not the first time Colosseum is burned, this was back in 64 AD during the grat fire of Rome. But this time, the artists hope to preserve, rather than destroy.
Stephanie Holmes BBC NEWS”
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