While working at punk music venues as a teenager in Copenhagen, Rose Eken developed a fascination
with concert detritus. The objects she was made to clean up after an event—cigarette butts,
drug paraphernalia, beer cans, discarded clothing, and lost cell phones—became emblems of
punk rock culture, which she now reproduces in the form of hand-painted ceramic miniatures.
Sculpting objects found in concert halls, kitchens, studios and similarly ubiquitous locations,
Eken methodically replicates detritus often placing them very systematic in a grid, suggestive
of scientific categorization. Her arrangements and sheer amount of production assume an
anthropological quality, documenting and preserving the relics of a culture and celebrating a
history in process. While Eken also produces embroideries, drawings, and sometimes even videos,
she favours clay for its versatility and clumsy form, as shaping and firing warp
the object along the way, resulting in unforeseen and unpredictable imperfections.