Luna Scales | Do no harm

Arden Asbæk Gallery is proud to present the solo exhibition Do no harm by the Danish video-based artist Luna Scales. The exhibition is centered around the video work “Minder ved berøring” (in English: “Memories by touch”). The work is based on childhood memories connected to hospital visits and medical examinations, a recurring theme in Scales’ practice that is informed by ableism and an ideological exploration of the relationship between doctor and patient, both from a personal and larger cultural historical angle.

In the video, Scales has interviewed four women, all of whom have a congenital muscular or neurological disease. For that reason, the four women have been closely followed by doctors throughout their upbringing. In her interviews, Scales has been particularly interested with creating a language to describe a living condition, where the world is preoccupied with your body. This has resulted in a narrative that reaches beyond the examination room itself, and touches upon grief and vulnerability within the family, confrontational meetings with other children as well as attempts to be included on the same terms as others.

In the concurrent photo series “Gør ingen skade” (in English: “Do no harm”), Scales broadens her perspective and uses excerpts from the Hippocratic Oath. An oath that historically has been taken by new physicians, who hereby swear, by a number of healing gods, to uphold a certain ethical standard in their work. The oath has been the cornerstone of medical ethics in the Western world for centuries, and through these excerpts, Scale’s focuses on a historical perspective linked to the profession of medicine as deeply associated with moral responsibility and ethical principles.

The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and Den Hielmstierne-Rosencronske Stiftelse.

Please notice: Unfortunately, due to a steep staircase, Arden Asbæk Gallery is not accessible to wheelchair users and not easily accessible for people with mobility or similar physical disabilities. For this reason, the video work will be screened in our lounge area (access through the courtyard) on the opening night as well as at Kunsthal Charlottenborg on December 5-9, 2023. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Luna Scales (b. 1992) graduated as a visual artist from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2020. Scales’ work has been exhibited in numerous group shows both nationally and internationally, and in 2019, she had a solo exhibition at the Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, Sweden. Her artistic practice is primarily based on video, through which she works with the medical language and body. She explores both the poetic dimension in diagnostics and the concrete meeting and relationship between doctor and patient in order to create a language beyond the objective science of the medical field.