Installation view, RECAST, We’re Magic. We’re Real #1, 2025, Fiolstræde The University Library Copenhagen.

We’re Magic. We’re Real #1 at Thorvaldsen’s Museum in Copenhagen, is filling an entire 18th century room with afro hair. A simple but forceful gesture reminding us of Denmark’s involvement in the transatlantic enslavement trade. Thorvaldsen’s museum opened in 1848 to honor one of Denmark’s most celebrated sculptors Bertil Thorvaldsen. However the fact that Thorvaldsen’s work was sponsored by one of the biggest slave owners in the former Danish West Indies is hardly ever mentioned. The installation has been installed recently in another historic building in Copenhagen, The University Library in Fiolstræde representing another 18th century institutional body tied to the colonial history of Denmark. By overflowing the exhibition space with afro hair, Ehlers points to a reclaiming of history and a renewed and decolonial view on our foundational bodies in (post)colonial society