An Elephant in the Room (or a mouse)

Installation with 104 drawings: graphite, paper;
460 x 357 cm, each drawing 29.7 x 42 cm (when not installed)

The idiom “the elephant in the room” describes an obvious, undesirable, or difficult topic everyone is aware of but chooses to ignore. The phrase suggests that something as noticeable as an elephant can be intentionally overlooked in social interactions. Instead of addressing these issues to relieve our burden, society’s tendency for repression magnifies them. But is an elephant truly scared of a mouse?

The artist embarked on a monumental task: drawing an elephant at its actual size. Over eighteen months, she constructed this large-scale piece of 104 individual drawings, focusing on the challenge of fitting a life-size elephant into a gallery space. This ambitious project metaphorically explores the tension between visibility and repression.

As Rye Holmboe writes in A World in Miniature for the Scraping for Gold exhibition, “The works are humorous comments on the reification of nature and the creative process, highlighting the price we pay for the lives we lead. In Human Hamster Wheel and Work, the mouse is replaced by a human, symbolizing the exploitation of labour and non-productive expenditures that sustain capitalism. The art world parodies these conditions but risks blurring the line between critique and complicity. The "elephant in the room" represents the repressed issues in society, like labour exploitation, which are noticeable yet intentionally overlooked.”

Credits:
Photo: Damjan Švarc