Signe Fensholt

"Rooting for everyone" is a series of compositions in porcelain and wood. Every single element draws inspiration from everyday things
- table legs, balusters, dishes and stands.
These objects are created to hold something or typically act as load-bearing or supporting elements. Here they are simplified to abstract forms that refer to their function in our daily lives.

Everyday objects carry our history and connect us with our present. The things we hold in our hands every day shape us as human beings.

We touch a surface, we read a form, we recognize a dynamic, we understand.

In collaboration with Anne Brandhøj

2023

"Rooting” is a pre study for a series of works that combine porcelain and wood in compositions inspired by everyday objects such as table legs, balusters, dishes and stands.

Here, the forms are simplified to plinths, which are the architectural element that supports the entire building. With compositions of plinths, we direct our gaze towards the UN's global goal no. 5, which is about caring work, which is the foundation for all other work. Global Goal No. 5 focuses on gender equality as a necessary area of ​​action for a sustainable world.

This goal aims to recognize and value caring work, which historically has often been seen as women's and, like natural resources, it has been a resource that could be drawn on at no cost.

New trends in economic theory see reproductive work as a factor that must be considered in the economy of a sustainable society. It has inspired us a series of works of load-bearing elements and create a number of compositions of plinths.

2023

In collaboration with Anne Brandhøj

With a series of unique sculptures in porcelain I point at the way we adapt to the surrounding conditions and how we take shape from limits that are not even recognized.

With natural growth kept in a strict pile shape, I address the sad fact that we are still fighting with mechanisms of structural repression. Invisible and often denied, but I believe that one day we will look back in wonder.

The sculptures are made of plants collected in nature and dipped several times in liquid porcelain. The plants conserved in raw porcelain are puzzled up in a mould, leaving an impression of natural growth limited by invisible boarders.

An organic patten is drawn by itself at the surfaces due to the natural plants and the way the liquid porcelain works.

2021

Porcelain, glazes

Approximate sizes:

23 x 12 x 12

28 x 14 x 14

A series of 7 unique ceramic tableaus in porcelain.

A tableau is a snapshot that holds the entire narrative. The ceramic tableau tells the story of how it became. In that way it is a stage for a performance, that has taken place in the kiln.

The result balances between carefully calculation and a loss of control. The dynamic shaping is stopped when the heat is switched off, leaving an imprint of processes that we are intimately defined by – growth and decay, gravity, attraction and adaption.

LO and BEHOLD are depicting the horror of losing control, but also the relief that comes with losing grip and letting go.

2020

Porcelain, glazes

Size app. 40x30x23

Supported by:

Danish Arts Foundation

Nationalbankens Jubilæumsfond

Presenting themselves on porcelain plints the organic shapes are including a spectator. They expect to be recognized, they pose for someone.

As frozen movements the works show how the framework we create is fictitious and limiting, but at the same time the prerequisite for our being.

The physical processes of the materials become mind images of existential conditions - our way of taking shape and becoming. 

2019

Porcelain, glazes

Poses  15 x 15 x 35

Privileged Poses  20 x 20 x 45

Supported by:

Grosserer L F Foghts Fond

Fondet for Dansk-Svensk Samarbejde

Ellen og Knuds Dalhoff Larsens Fond

The work was selected for the Biennale for Craft & Design 2019, Copenhagen.

The brief of the Biennale 2019 concerned the notion af community. The work celebrates the shared meal as one of the most essential communities.

A shared meal may confirm a relationship or mark the closing of a deal. Having a meal together is a way to celebrate the major events in our life’s and the cultural traditions throughout the year. 

In the shared meal, basic needs for food become a way to build a bond and create a sense of community.

In formal table settings, a centrepiece is an exquisitely decorative object made to impress. It represents all the aspects of the meal that are not simply about satisfying physical needs: relationships, social conventions and the cultural community.

A meal can also be a stage for a social performance. The work translates the social interplay into movements in the materials. In the firing, the glaze transforms the objects or takes a shape in itself. Staging the creation, parts off the creative process is left to the firing and the natural forces involved in the ceramic process.

2019

Stoneware, porcelain, glaze, wood

300 x 60 x 110

The work was supported by

Den danske Nationalbanks Jubilæumsfond

Shaped in the kiln, cropped after fire. 

The dynamic of the materials is still visible as traces of creation. The floating movement of the melting process has stopped as a snap shot of the natural forces involved in the transformation. 

The cut reveals the fragile organic complexity. The empty space defines the shape, like all absent things in life defines you by their not being present.

When you hit the shape of absence you are hurt by nothing.

2018

Wall piece with metal mounting on back side.

Glaze on glaze and glass

60 x 60 x 10 cm

Traditionally ceramic glaze is a surface on an object. In this work the glaze is taking a shape itself.

The dynamic qualities of the melting glaze are revealed by a manmade shape – an edge, a direction, an order.

In the meeting, we recognize the ability to move, to transform and to take a shape. 

In the meeting with the other, we become.

2018

Wall piece

Porcelain, form-dynamic glaze

40 x 40 x 10 cm

Traditionally ceramic glaze is a surface on an object.

In this work the glaze is creating a shape itself.

The shaping takes place in the glowing heat of the ceramic kiln.

It is a powerful and poetic transformation ruled by natural forces

- the heat, the gravity and the physical reactions.

The dynamic qualities of the melting glaze are revealed by a manmade shape – an edge, a direction, an order.

The earthy feeling of the glaze is contrasted by the purity of the refined porcelain.

This is a meeting between two creative principles:

the designed construction and the imprint of natural forces.

Composition of 6 wall pieces.

2018

Casted porcelain, form-dynamic glaze

200 x 40 x 10 cm

2018

Wall piece

Composition of two

Casted porcelain, form-dynamic glaze

85 x 40 x 10 cm

2018

Wall piece

Casted porcelain, form-dynamic glaze.

Single pieces 40 x 40 x 10 cm

The work points at the power in natural processes. It celebrates the nature of glass as a liquid material caught at a stage in its ongoing process of transformation.

2017

Glass, steel

60 x 200 x 10 cm

The power of material processes frozen in retained tensions.

2017

Glass, porcelain, steel

20 x 30 x 7 cm

An interpretation of historic centerpieces in Collaboration with Royal Copenhagen.

Centrepieces are exquisite objects, overwhelming in size and richness of details. They were made to impress and were the decorative centre of the aristocratic table setting.

I have taken the centrepiece into a contemporary context focusing on the longing for authenticity that comes with the modern way of living. The wild and untouched nature is the true luxury of today. It is my intention to reveal the magic transformation of basic materials, leaving traces of the process as if it was untouched. This reminds us of the raw beauty in nature before it is tamed and refined. I combine the intriguing ceramic surfaces with the cultivated perfection of the porcelain to unfold and enhance the two different senses of beauty. 

2016

Porcelain, glazes

40 x 50 x 30 cm