Limfjordslandskab (nær Løgstør?) 1864 - 1941

Editor: So this is "Limfjordslandskab (nær Løgstør?)" by Niels Larsen Stevns. It's a drawing on paper, made with colored pencil, sometime between 1864 and 1941. It looks like a page in a sketchbook or journal, and it feels… incomplete. What do you see in this piece? Curator: I see a poignant commentary on the very nature of landscape and its connection to identity. The emptiness almost screams. It urges us to consider what Larsen Stevns isn't showing us and to unpack that absence. What are the politics of visibility at play here? Editor: Politics of visibility? What do you mean? Curator: Think about it: landscapes aren’t neutral. Who gets to depict them, who is included, who is erased? This drawing gestures at a place, a specific place even, yet leaves it intentionally vague. Consider the colonial gaze, for example. Was Larsen Stevns pushing back against that, by deliberately *not* romanticizing the landscape? Or even questioning the traditional concept of representation. Does leaving it vague welcome a new form? Editor: That's a totally different way of looking at a simple drawing. I guess I hadn’t considered the power dynamics involved in landscape art before. Curator: Exactly. The incompleteness allows us, forces us, to fill in the blanks with our own experiences and perspectives, hopefully dismantling those old colonial and patriarchal ways of seeing. The liminal space here offers the potential for a more inclusive, equitable representation. Editor: I can see how it could be viewed that way now. The idea of incompleteness almost welcomes re-imagining the history around this artwork. Thank you!