Makabre Mesterværker

Sønderborg Slot, Museum Sønderjylland

2022

A special exhibition at Sønderborg Castle on how people have staged and shaped death, told through jewellery. Eighty-eight works from 1300 BC to 2021: pieces made for the exhibition by 37 Danish and international goldsmiths and jewellery designers, set against prehistoric and historical objects from the museum's collection and loans from abroad. Among them a diamond pressed from the ashes of the dead, pearls of bone, a chain of hip bone and the hand of a man executed in Texas. The route runs through five rooms in a castle that has held the ducal family's burial chapel since 1586: Med døden til følge, Af det organiske, Ved graven, Til minde and For evigt. Black vitrines, low light and projections that write each room's title across the walls carry the visitor from the violence of death's triumph to the promise of eternal life.