I met Michelle Eistrup at a seminar in Copenhagen in the winter of 2009. It was one of those very important meetings, which I regard as one of life’s beautiful gifts. Eistrup introduced me to the ‘Black Continent’, its deep spirituality, its brutal history and the creativity of its Diaspora. Born in Copenhagen, Eistrup grew up in Jamaica, America and France. Now living in Denmark, her fantastic life experience is channelled into her artworks.

In Autumn 2010, Galleri Image, Aarhus, presented Eistrup’s installation, Wild as the Wind, which included photographs and a video of the semi-wild horses that live on the Danish island Læsø. In the work, the horses assume beautiful sculptural formations during the day – either resting or in movement – and at night they dance playfully, veering off onto unusual, hidden paths. Art critic Mark Le Fanu wrote that the mythic quality of the animals, the gentle humour and unforced brilliance of the images originate from ‘the integrity of someone who watches closely over a substantial period of time; who effaces herself in front of the object, rather than trying to force upon it an outside interpretation’.

In the collaborative video-piece Too Long Are Our Memories (2010), James Muriuki and Eistrup incorporate images of deer in a wintery forest, a girl picking coffee and Kenyan servants dancing on the roof of an old train, thus connecting various realities through imagery and sound. The deer become mythical conveyers of meaning – somehow their continuous and calm movements seem to convey a soothing continuity of life. Alternatively, is their continuous grazing somehow connected to the exploitation of Kenyan workers in coffee plantations and on the railroad? Too Long Are Our Memories opens up an extended reality where emotions, dreams, visions and – first and foremost – one’s sense of being create new patterns by untying fixed connections.

It is not only in her own work that Eistrup approaches the amnesia of former colonial powers. As a curator, she has instigated transnational collaborations such as NotAboutKarenBlixen (2010) that was co-curated with Brooke Minto in Kenya and Denmark, and Face à Face (2010) co-curated with Amadou Kane-Sy in Senegal and Denmark. According to the festival manager of My World IMAGES, Annemari Brogaard Clausen, Eistrup believes passionately in getting artists to work closely together, during residencies in each other’s country, as well as creating exhibitions and performances beyond the conventional institutional spaces. In BAT: Bridging Art + Text, initiated in Spring 2012, she connects artists, writers and curators based in Africa and the Caribbean with the Diaspora living in Europe and America. According to Eistrup, it is a platform for sharing knowledge on independent politics, religious practices, identity and art spaces across the Atlantic, and a way to create space for intercultural artists challenging the predominantly homogenous and conservative mindset of Northern Europe.