In the Past We Made History

Tina Enghoff & Kent Klich: In the Past We Made History
In collaboration with Anastasija (Nastija) Kiake

In 2015, Europe experienced a large refugee and migrant crisis with over one million people seeking refuge. In the Past We Made History is an artistic inquiry in the form of an archive, focusing on strategies of remembering and bearing witness which are often left out of collective memory or official history writing. Consisting of oral history, photography, photogrammetry, and film installations, the archive forms a living tapestry as it continues to open itself up to change and transformation. The different threads can be seen as multiple timelines that bend the past and the present.

The archive interweaves the memory fragments of eighty-nine locations in Denmark that functioned as Refugee Asylum Centers and Emergency Aid Centers reception and emergency aid centres for people with refugee experience until 2018. During the period from 2022-24 the artists have documented the architecture – buildings, rooms, surface textures – that shaped the framework of the newcomers’ daily lives. These images are juxtaposed with photographs from local archives from all over Denmark and represent a broader history of migration.

People/Danes with refugee experience who have links to the local Refugee Asylum Centers and Emergency Aid Centers have actively collaborated with the artists, selecting from a wide range of photographs to establish the format of the archive and decide what would be worth preserving. The archive thus unfolds and intertwines as individual archives as well as a collective archive, offering an opportunity to renegotiate and retell history, while bringing personal life stories and testimonies into focus.

The years between 2015-18 marked a paradigm shift in Denmark – from welcoming refugees to pursuing a more restrictive immigration policy. The archive In the Past We Made History aims to hold space for the importance of that period, as these former centres are now either already excluded or in the process of being erased from public memory in Denmark. This is expressed by their absence from the archives as much as in the repurposing and demolishment of the buildings across the country.

Twenty-two people/Danes with refugee experience have participated with their invaluable knowledge and input, deciding and choosing this archive: Abiel, Abood, Adnan, Ahmad, Fili, Eden, Ghazanfar, Ibrahim, Katja, Khaled, Mazen, Moutaz, Rahima, Rohin, Ruta, Sahl, Shokrullah, Senait, Senait, Shewit, Yasin and Yousef. As some of the participants have asked that their last name be omitted, the decision to do so is a collective one and valid for everyone. Anastasija (Nastija) Kiake is a visual artist, writer, and researcher with roots in Latvia. They are based in The Hague, NL and has collaborated with Tina Enghoff and Kent Klich in developing In the Past We Made History.

The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, and the New Carlsberg Foundation. The artists’ production of works for the exhibition is supported by the Danish Visual Artists, the Danish Arts Foundation, the Danish Art Workshops, the Council for Visual Arts, Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond, the Beckett-Foundation, the Nordic Culture Fund Opstart, the Swedish Arts Grant Committee.