Your Mother is My Mother from Another Mother – Farshad Farzankia & Henry Heerup

27. March 2026 - 30. August 2026

In the special exhibition ‘your Mother is my Mother from another Mother’, the Heerup Museum presents a unique visual dialogue between the beloved modernist artist Henry Heerup (1907-93) and Iranian-born contemporary artist Farshad Farzankia (b. 1980). Farzankia, known for his expressive and colorful paintings, has delved into Heerup’s diverse artistic universe and has created a selection of paintings, sculptures and works on paper for the exhibition, which, together with individual loans, play up to a carefully curated selection from the Heerup Museum’s collection.

CYCLICAL SYMBOLISM

‘your Mother is my Mother from another Mother’ invites visitors into a sensual and thought-provoking encounter between two artists who unfold a broadly appealing range of motifs. Farzankia and Heerup both draw from the large reservoir of images in art and cultural history by incorporating motifs that appeal to the viewer’s imagination and emotional life. For Heerup, the use of recognizable symbols – and their repetition in imaginative juxtapositions – helped to make art accessible to ordinary people. But as an artist, he also understood how to make visible the symbolic and mythical potential in everyday life.

In the run-up to the exhibition, it has been a great inspiration for Farzankia to be close to Heerup’s works, which he describes as both alive and relevant. Two paintings in the exhibition in particular have made a great impression on Farzankia: the iconic painting ‘Vanløse Madonna’ (1934) from Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, in which Heerup portrays his own wife Mille as a mythical Madonna, and the colorful painting ‘The Boy at the Ulvedal Oak’ (1969), which deals with Heerup’s close connection to nature and its cyclical patterns. Heerup’s many depictions of the Ulvedal oak– an old oak tree, which he links to his own artistic birth – is seen by Farzankia as a strong and personally grounded myth of human rebirth, showing that myths are not always about gods or heroic figures, but can also be rooted in a down-to-earth modern reality.

The question of rebirth – also in a cosmic sense – is explored by Farzankia in the two monumental paintings ‘The Birth of the Woman’ (2026) and ‘The Birth of the Man’ (2026) and in the sculpture ‘The Chic Kids of Pasargad’ (2026). In the latter work, he points to his Iranian roots by referring to the ancient city of Pasargad, the first capital of the Persian Empire. The current unrest in Iran forms the basis of this work, where Farzankia narrates the history of his homeland in the hope of a national rebirth after five decades of living under an oppressive regime.

COFFEE POTS AND SHIPPING CRATES

Farshad Farzankia’s artistic practice embraces both the two- and three-dimensional, and in this exhibition, alongside his large painterly compositions, one can experience several sculptural forms of expression that combine painting and drawing with found objects and recycled materials. In line with Heerup, Farzankia also sees the aesthetic and critical potential in such modest materials that have had a second life. Their use functions as a cyclical and sustainable alternative to our contemporary throw-away culture and also helps to activate both the exhibition space and the viewer’s ideas about the stories and material qualities that the various objects carry.

In his time, Heerup combined found and discarded objects into so-called ‘garbage models’ such as ‘The Picture Turner’ (1950) and ‘The Photographer’ (1963), both of which can be seen in the exhibition, and he thereby made himself known as an artist with a unique eye for the life and patina of materials. In his own way, Farzankia also finds inspiration in the materiality of his time, and he has, for example, included various shipping crates in the dialogue with Heerup. In the large title work ‘Your Mother is My Mother from Another Mother’ (2026), he paints an entire wooden crate, which is also combined with found objects such as decorative coffee pots, which in Farzankia’s eyes manifest a kinship with Heerup. “Heerup’s coffee pot becomes my coffee pot,” he says of the process of creating this exhibition, where the iconic Madam Blå-coffee pot also appears as a functional object that, in a particularly Heerup-esque way, is charged with everyday poetry.

Farzankia also uses parts of the shipping crates in a series of four different picture boards containing expressive works made on paper. The passing of time plays a role in the many immediate and colorful drawings that Farzankia selects and mounts on the boards. One drawing leads to another, and each time Farzankia signs and dates the drawing on the back. The dating is transferred to the next paper in the sketchbook, and thus time, drawings and personal memories flow together in the large boards, which all contain motifs and dates in multiple layers and colors.

The exhibition ‘your Mother is my Mother from another Mother’ initiates a conversation about how we can see Heerup today. Heerup has long been a great inspiration for Farzankia, and it is with great pleasure that Heerup Museum opens its doors to this artistic meeting, which introduces its visitors to Farzankia’s wide-ranging artistic practice and provides a new and personal perspective on Heerup’s life and work.

ABOUT FARSHAD FARZANKIA

Farshad Farzankia (b. 1980) was born in Tehran, Iran, but fled with his family to Denmark at the age of nine in the wake of the Iranian revolution. He originally trained as a graphic designer but has worked as a visual artist since 2016. Farzankia is represented by Andersen’s Contemporary in Copenhagen and works with painting, sculpture, graphic prints and formats on paper. In his artistic practice, he is concerned with personal memories and cultural forms of expression such as music, poetry, philosophy, visual and film art. Farzankia works at the intersection of figuration and abstraction, composing dynamic works where the viewer can both dwell on captivating details and lose his footing for a moment in a painterly reality that operates on its own terms. In his works, he explores personal and universal questions based on an intuitive and improvisational method that destabilizes fixed categories and opens new and fruitful connections between work, world and viewer.

Farzankia is represented in a wide range of Danish and international museum and private collections such as Yusaku Maezawa, Japan; The Progressive Art Collection, USA; The New Carlsberg Foundation, DK and ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, DK. Farzankia has had group and solo exhibitions both at home and abroad at, among others, Trapholt, DK (2025); Willumsens Museum, DK (2022); FOUNDRY, Korea (2022); ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, DK (2021); Turn Gallery, USA (2020) and Richard Heller Gallery, USA (2018).

ABOUT HENRY HEERUP

Henry Heerup (1907-93) was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1927 to 1932 and as an artist he created both garbage models, stone sculptures, paintings, drawings and graphics. He was part of several artistic communities, while at the same time emerging as a loner early on. As a central figure in the circle of spontaneous-abstract artists, Heerup helped to put play and imagination in artistic focus in his own time, but he also opposed the perception of art as being a distinctly high-cultured and intellectual occupation. Under the motto ‘All art should be popular’, he worked with a conscious artistic strategy of allowing art to reach as many people as possible, by incorporating everyday motifs and materials that are universal and broadly appealing. Over the years, the original became his special trademark – both in relation to art and understood as an integral part of his personality. However, the original as something unique and sublime did not interest him.

In his lifetime, Heerup exhibited both in Denmark and abroad, and he has received several medals and recognitions. He is represented in countless museums and private collections worldwide, including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, DK; SMK – the National Gallery of Denmark, DK; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Holland; MoMA Museum of Modern Art, USA and Museum Cobra, Holland.

FILM

For the exhibition, film director and author Nitesh Anjaan has created a film that gives visitors insight into Farshad Farzankia’s artistic process.

PUBLICATION

In relation to the exhibition at Heerup Museum, a catalogue will be published with a foreword by museum director at Heerup Museum, Janna Lund, and texts by museum director at Museum Jorn, Christian Kortegaard Madsen, and art advisor Louise Rytter. A book launch will be held on 26 May.

THE EXHIBITION IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY

The Danish National Arts Foundation, the Obel Family Foundation, the Arne V. Schlesch Foundation, the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation, the Grosserer L. F. Foght Foundation and the Augustinus Foundation.