The seductive surfaces in Kamil Dossar’s enigmatic films, paintings, and sculptures grow from dire or dark questions of masculinity, migration, and monstrous or outcast, even invisible identities.
In what marks his first large-scale institutional solo exhibition, taking place at O—Overgaden in late Autumn 2025, Dossar takes as a point of departure his personal position as an ethnically minoritized man with Iraqi and Hungarian background. Using AI and “deep fake” technologies, the musicians in an iconic and opulent 1968 concert film of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, are turned into monsters. Commenting on the apparent benevolence of what has become Europe’s emotional hymn to freedom—a hymn that has previously been used by totalitarian regimes—Dossar reveals its hidden darkness. Meanwhile, grand-scale, living pictures of cityscapes in Iraq are layered, turning the locals into reptilian creatures. The monstrous faces thus retell the EU’s idealized narrative from within, while the monstrosity as the stamped trademark erasing almost any Middle Eastern personae is brought to the fore.
Kamil Dossar (b. 1988, DK) is a graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2024) and lives and works in Copenhagen. Dossar’s upcoming solo exhibition at O—Overgaden marks the culmination of his participation in the one-year postgraduate program, INTRO 2025, supported generously by the Louis-Hansen Foundation. He has previously exhibited at venues including Bianca D’Alessandro, Copenhagen (2024, 2022); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2024, 2022); Andersen’s, Copenhagen (2023); Annual Reportt, Copenhagen (2021); and New Release, New York (2016). Dossar has been awarded the Poul Erik Bech Foundation’s Art Prize (2024) and the Blix Foundation’s Special Honorary Prize (2024).
The exhibition is supported by:
- Aage Og Johanne Louis Hansens Fond