CAPSULES / LUXEMBOURG ART WEEK, LX
Installation by Olivia Rode HvassCurated by Çağla Erdemir
15th of October - 23rd of November 2025
HUNT(ED)
Installation by Olivia Rode Hvasscurated by Çağla Erdemir
HUNT(ED) presents a series of digitally woven landscapes where myth and memory intertwine with reflections on power and conquest. More than mere tools, the looms in Olivia Rode Hvass’ works become narrative devices – threading together stories of care, resistance, and interconnectedness in a fragmented world. At their core lies a pressing question: In times of crisis, when caring communities are both vital and vulnerable, how can we resist apathy and isolation within an individualised, production-driven society?
Central to the installation is the figure of the horse – once a unicorn. Inspired by the 16th-century tapestry cycle La Chasse à la licorne, in which a mythical creature is hunted and caged, Hvass revisits the image of the unicorn as a symbol of categorisation and control. Historically, the unicorn has stood for the magical, the Other, the untameable – only to be later weaponised to represent desire subdued and difference regulated. Where the original cycle glorifies capture, Hvass exposes its underlying narratives of domination. In her reinterpretation, the lush hunting grounds lie desolate, covered in brittle hay; the once-mythic unicorn has shed its horn and returned as a grounded horse. Yet it remains tethered, trapped within symbolic structures and subjected to forces of containment.
Opposite the horse stands another figure: the scarecrow, a silent sentinel in the fields of memory. At once guardian and warning, the scarecrow embodies social institutions designed to protect and regulate systems of care that exclude even as they include. It becomes a haunting monument to the ambivalence of authority and support.
Hvass’s Jacquard tapestries draw on both historical and mythical narratives to expose the mechanisms through which the Other – particularly queer and marginalised bodies – is abstracted into type, rendered object, and disciplined by systemic power. Her works reveal how these bodies do not emerge as equals, but as subjects policed, classified, and consumed by state institutions, social norms, and cultural imaginaries.
Equally striking is their emotionally immediate visual language – one that merges pop-cultural iconography, queer aesthetics, and youth culture with historical references. This tension between critique and affect produces an oscillation between the whimsical and the profound, between My Little Pony and medieval hunting scenes.
The rough straw fringes, flower petals and hay evoke both rural landscapes and dreamlike fantasy. This imaginary draws from comic aesthetics and children’s book illustrations, recalling the intimacy of a teenager’s bedroom: adorned with horse posters, full of longing and projection. Like those youthful drawings, Hvass’s horse becomes a figure in search of kinship. Cuteness aestheticises powerlessness. Toys and plush animals become icons of an infantilising visual economy. In HUNT(ED), the depiction of the unicorn’s capture – its sweetness and fragility – awakens protective impulses. These affective responses reposition the viewer: no longer aligned with the systems embodied by the scarecrow, but with the hunted.
Even as we acknowledge our complicity in systems of control, Olivia Rode Hvass’s work ultimately invites a shift in perspective. Through empathy and attunement, we are drawn toward figures that resist domestication and categorisation – toward the untamed, the system-breaking, the Other. Her work reminds us that care, if it is to be liberatory, must begin with an unflinching reckoning with power.
Curated by Çağla Erdemir.
Duo interview of Olivia Rode Hvass and Miriam Schmidtke, Capsules 2025 by Livia Klein
Location
Centre Neuberg,
7, pl. du Théâtre, L-2613 Luxembourg
Art Walk Challenge
Photos by Sophie Margue and Patty Neu
and façades in the city center. Each activated space will be visible from the street around the clock.