With a new exhibition, Bolatta and Aka Høegh delve into the relationship between daughter and mother

It has been 21 years since Bolatta Silis-Høegh and Aka Høegh first exhibited together. Now the two artists are back with a new exhibition, where lineage and generations are the focal point.

Bolatta Silis-Høegh had not actually imagined that art would become her way of life.

As the daughter of one of the country’s renowned artists, Aka Høegh, she knew the downside of the artist’s life, which can often be portrayed as glamorous. A downside of financial uncertainty and instability.

Yet Bolatta Silis-Høegh has now landed here as an established artist, surrounded by her paintings in her studio in Vesterbro, Copenhagen. An old black-and-white family photo hangs on the bulletin board, while a black stuffed raven stands on the table, reminding her of where she comes from. Qaqortoq.

Generations, roots and the mother-daughter relationship are also the focal point of a current exhibition at the Johannes Larsen Museum in the Funen town of Kerteminde, where she is exhibiting with her mother, Aka Høegh.

Aqqut, the exhibition is called. Path. It shows everyone their own path in the world of art.

Aqqut

It has been 21 years since the two exhibited together for the first and so far only time. Bolatta Silis-Høegh was also a bit skeptical when she was initially asked if they would exhibit together.

– Everyone has a process of liberation, and I’ve been through it too. You might not want to be associated with your parents in your work. Both my mother and I are very individual and different people, although we of course have a core together, she says.

But after a year and a half of process and work, she is now really proud of the exhibition.

– After some thought, I decided that it would be exciting to explore that core. Just putting us together is quite big and enormously loving. My mother is still bubbly, but she is also getting older. So if it was going to happen, it had to be now.

Through generations 

In the first room of the exhibition hangs a large painting with a small figure of Aka Høegh, lying on her side and sleeping. She still has her black glasses on. Her head rests peacefully on the pillow, while a large black-and-white striped duvet covers her body.

It is one of the portraits that 44-year-old Bolatta Silis-Høegh has painted of her mother over time, and which now hangs side by side with portraits of herself as a child. Portraits that Aka Høegh has painted of her children.

Because art is a language they have always shared, says Bolatta Silis-Høegh.

– It’s loving and exciting. But a mother-daughter relationship is not only loving. There is also toxicity and things that are inherited through generations.

In a 31-meter-long pink fabric, Bolatta Silis-Høegh has gathered generations in the form of old tablecloths, bed linen and tea towels from her grandmother, great-grandmother and mother. Birth is the name of the work, which hangs in the next room of the exhibition.

Because through the textiles, her ancestors speak. Through all the concentration and love that goes into embroidering a tablecloth.

– My grandmother from North Greenland grew up with the idea that if you didn’t have an embroidered tablecloth, you didn’t come from a proper home. And I think of that very fondly. What overtime they must have been working.

– They imposed a form of social control on each other by both being as nice as possible, but also as Danish as possible. But at the same time, she has put a lot of love into this tablecloth. So many dinners and joy have been around the tablecloth, says Bolatta Silis-Høegh.

At the same time, the exhibition is also a loving thought to generations of women throughout time. Bolatta Silis-Høegh has painted, among other things, four small paintings of wombs, which are also the size of a womb.

She painted them after the IUD scandal began to unfold in 2022, when it emerged that thousands of women in Greenland had IUDs inserted in the 1960s and 70s as part of the Danish authorities’ strategy to reduce Greenland’s population growth.

For Bolatta Silis-Høegh, the paintings are a thought for all the women who have gone through pain, infertility, illness and trauma that is passed down through generations.

– Some say it can take up to seven generations to process a trauma. But that also applies to the good and loving things. And that is a great comfort to me, she says.

In inspiration

In one of the exhibition’s other rooms hangs a series of Aka Høegh’s illustrations of Sassuma Arna. Graphic works from myths and legends.

– She is so good at capturing landscapes and faces, says Bolatta Silis-Høegh about her mother’s works and continues:

– You almost always see the soul in them. If she portrays a mountain, you see not just a mountain, but also the power in it. It is a great gift that she can convey that. And one that I have been inspired by both unconsciously and consciously in recent years.

Inuit culture has always had a special place in the art of the now 77-year-old Aka Høegh. She is inspired by the culture. The people. Nature. Finds strength and peace in the mountains.

– As a young person, I had difficulty finding myself and expressing myself through language. But through art I can show who I am as a person. I feel safe reading and seeing what our ancestors have done. How strong our ancestors have been, says Aka Høegh over a phone line from Qaqortoq, where she has just landed.

But it’s not just myths and legends that inspire Aka Høegh. So do her children, whom she has portrayed in a number of pictures.

That’s why it was also inspiring for her to create the exhibition together with her daughter.

– Bolatta is very inspiring to me. She expresses herself in a contemporary way, what is happening around her, what she reads, what is in the media. Where she is touched in the soul.

– I have always trusted my children a lot. They are completely themselves. Their world is so beautiful to look at. They express themselves independently and become an inspiration to others, and I am very happy about that, says Aka Høegh.

It should be easy

Yet the two artists quickly agreed that they should not create works together for the exhibition. Firstly, they are often in different places in the world. Bolatta Silis-Høegh is based in Copenhagen, while Aka Høegh often travels between Qaqortoq, Nuuk and Sweden.

– For us as very individual artists, it would require far too much work and energy. So it has been important for us to maintain that it was easy. We have a common language in art, and it is easy there, because that is how we communicate, and that is how we communicate best, says Bolatta Silis-Høegh.

And precisely the attitude that it should be easy is also something that Bolatta Silis-Høegh takes with her from her mother’s artistic practice.

– The lightness knows that it is also just art. And that you should enjoy life. Go out and fill it with nature and art, so that it doesn’t become so heavy.

The exhibition at the Johannes Larsen Museum can be seen until September 7, 2025.