Karen Bit Vejle (born June 5, 1958 in Ejby,

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

) is a Danish papercut artist. She lived in

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; ), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros, and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2022, it had a population of 212,660. Trondheim is the third most populous municipality in Norway, and is ...

, Norway from 1984 to 2014, and currently lives in Denmark. Karen Bit Vejle psaligraphy 1

Work and philosophy

Vejle's primary art form is

papercutting Papercutting or paper cutting is the art of paper designs that has evolved all over the world to adapt to different cultural styles. One traditional distinction most styles share is that the designs are cut from a single sheet of paper as oppo ...

, the art of creating images made of paper by cutting patterns and pictures. She carries on a tradition from, among others, the Danish fairy-tale writer H.C. Andersen, and a technique that was important in the 1700s for

silhouette A silhouette (, ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhouett ...

portraiture A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better re ...

. Papercut art is made from large sheets of paper and cut only with

scissors Scissors are hand-operated shearing tools. A pair of scissors consists of a pair of blades pivoted so that the sharpened edges slide against each other when the handles (bows) opposite to the pivot are closed. Scissors are used for cutting var ...

. The work of creating this type of art is time-intensive and requires great concentration; a wrong cut cannot be undone.

An important figure in Vejle's artwork is "Ballerina Bulldog," an apparently delicate, but strong, ballerina. The aim of the Ballerina Bulldog concept is to provoke reflection on one's own inner strength, and increase awareness of the responsibility one has for one's own life choices. The concept is based on

Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , ; ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danes, Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical tex ...

's philosophy: She also creates template paintings, cutting images from one piece of paper and transferring them by painting on a second sheet ( stenciling).

Career

Vejle has had installations and shows in Scandinavia, Europe, Asia and the United States. The well-known London gallery

Adrian Sassoon Adrian Sassoon (born February 1961) is an English art dealer, art collector and writer. He was schooled at Eton College, where he was taught ceramics by Gordon Baldwin; he went on to study further at Christie’s Education. He worked as an as ...

is the main seller of her art. The

American Swedish Institute The American Swedish Institute (ASI) is a museum and cultural center in the Phillips West, Minneapolis, Phillips West neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The organization is dedicated to the preservation and study of the histo ...

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

exhibited 54 of her paper creations in a 2016 show called ''Papercut! The Incredible Psaligraphy of Karen Bit Vejle''. In 2010 she began an artistic collaboration, "Paper dialogues," with the Chinese papercut artist Xiaoguan Qiao. Both Vejle and Qiao created work depicted dragons; as Qiao put it, the "dragon’s meaning as a symbol differs depending on the culture that views it." The collaboration resulted in an exhibit that was shown in many countries around the world. Vejle is the subject of a documentary by Norwegian filmmaker Gry Molvær Hivju, "Bit Ballerina Bulldog", that was nominated for Best Documentary of the Year during at the 2015

Bergen International Film Festival The Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF) is a film festival held annually in October in Bergen, Norway since 2000. It is one of the biggest film festivals in Norway and among the most important documentary film festivals in the Nordic coun ...

(BIFF), and nominated for Best Movie Music for the Norwegian Broadcast Industry's Golden Screen award.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vejle, Karen Bit 1958 births Living people People from Middelfart Municipality 21st-century Danish artists