By Shao Zhong Li It was my first time entering a mosque when the participants in the course Cultural Encounters and Differences on a sunny Friday went on an excursion to Imam Ali Moskeen, a mosque in Copenhagen. We were lucky to have guided tour and learn from the ‘insider’ point of view, as well as through our interactions with the guide. As we are a group of students with multicultural backgrounds, which came in contact with the Muslim guide…
By Mads Neess Priisholm. Here is a quick question for you. Where did our favourite Danish porcelain really come from? – not really in the sense of ‘made in Hong Kong’, kind of, from where are items manufactured, sort of questioning. But more to the question of, where did the method of production come from? Who invented the goat – really? In this blog, I have chosen to bring focus to one of Danish society’s best known design objects. The…
By Karen Ayerve Astudillo and Pil Qvist Østergaard We arrived at The David Collection in Copenhagen with expectations on learning about and discovering art in the Islamic world. However, when talking about Islam, it is almost inevitable to think of other discussions more related to religion, rather than with art. Daniela, one of the Museum’s curators, guided our tour. Shortly after, as we forecasted, the first comments regarding religion rose. Daniela told us it was quite usual to have school…
By Louise Borges-Hansen and Maiken Hollænder Larsen Friday the 13th of April we visited Davids Samling and met educator Daniella, who took us on a journey through the crooked and charming exhibition rooms of the Museum. Daniella introduced her vision of using the Islamic exhibition as a tool to challenge and change the prejudices of Danish schoolers and strengthen their opportunities for negotiate and create new shared tales. With the broad collection of Islamic artifacts shown from three diverse perspectives…
By Dildora Nutfieva and Renata Byfoged The David Collection in Copenhagen has a wide and varied collection of Islamic art, which is structured chronologically and geographically. Artefacts from different regions reveal the diversity of cultural traditions in Islamic art and a timeline serves as a structural tool for presenting different periods. Displaying the Islamic collection in a geographically categorized framework help visitors understand Islamic civilization in different time periods and regions. This way of presenting Islamic objects invites the visitors…
By Josephine Amanda Jørgensen, Nadia Charlotte Dahlgren Petersen and Nicoline Bonø Reindel, Sunday morning in April and the sun is shining. Although it is Sunday, Købmagergade is filled with people enjoying the weather. Copenhageners never waste a chance to get some vitamin D. As we reach Rundetårn the spring has gotten us all frisky and smiling. We are so ready for this exhibition! We enter the great national landmark and make our way up the spiral passage. None of us…
By Paulina Anna Gretkierewicz The Imam Ali Moske in Copenhagen is the biggest mosque in Denmark. It was inaugurated in October 2015 and is placed in the district of Nørrebro. Two turquoise minarets and a dome decorated in gold look over the square apartment blocks surrounding it on Vibevej. The blue of the facade stands out, in contrast to the red bricks of its surrounding architecture. Somehow, this majestic blue building appears hidden on a side street to Nørrebrogade, and…
By Ditte Nikolajsen Volfbrandt, Lasse Ringø Hansen and Charlotte Juul Olsson Two enormous minarets rise above the roofs of Nordvest. We were about to attend the Friday prayer at the Imam Ali Mosque. While entering the mosque we were confronted with the gender division, which would split up the group. We realized that the division might foster different experiences of the prayer. The balcony Entering the balcony, people were already sitting on the floor or on the wooden…
By Ruben Campos Arjona Born out of a necessity to enter a conversation in which they were only talked about but not talked to, this group of women decided to make their voice heard by joining together to do the one thing no one was willing to do: establish a dialogue. Kvinder I Dialog (Women in Dialogue) has chosen to approach the general public in an attempt to build bridges and burn down stereotypes about and around them. But who are…
By Ida Cecilie Guttman Gammeltoft, Asmus Sebastian Kobbernagel og Peter Krøgh Lundby Gravesen On a sunny spring morning, we visited The David Collection as part of the Master programme of Cultural Encounters. The subject of the day: the museum’s exhibition of Islamic art. The David Collection holds the eighth largest collection of Islamic art in the Western world, although the museum views itself first and foremost as ‘a collector of beautiful objects’, rather than as a museum of religious art….