Tina Enghoff

About this book

Displaced' is based on research, site-specific art activism, outreach and local collaborations in Greenland, and it examines the archive's role in relation to personal history. The research takes us through two parallel worlds, David's memories of his stay as a child in Denmark in the beginning of the fifties, oral history, and written statements about him and Nanortalik (his place of birth) in the Danish archives. Displaced is based on postcolonial identity and tales of losing ones roots, belonging and language - but also of regaining ownership.00The story unfolds between a detail of a snapshot from RefsƯnæs Coastal Hospital in the mid-1950s and a 3D visualisaƯtion of stones from the beach below the hospital a lifetime later. Between David Samuel Naeman Josef Kristoffersen, one of the children in the photograph, and Tina Enghoff, who has gathered the stones and archival material included in Displaced. David Kristoffersen?s story can begin in different places at different times. Like a thin yet strong thread, it ties Greenland and Denmark together, weaving between the rods of colonisation: displacement, annexation, and silencing. David Kristoffersen?s story is, however, first and foremost his own, and he relates his memories partly in his own voice, and partly by allowing Tina Enghoff to weave new threads into the story in the form of archival material, documentation of physical places, and visual manifestations of states of mind. Individually these traces are subdued and almost negligible, but together they form a chorus of testimony to colonial history that has deep resonance.