28/09/2026
What if a piece of paper could still become anything?
This time, Artbridger turns its attention to Paper Planes at Copenhagen Contemporary, an exhibition that looks at how imagination, rules and everyday systems shape the way we see the world.
French artist Camille Henrot has spent the past two decades looking at the systems we use to make sense of everyday life. Moving between film, painting, sculpture, drawing and installation, her practice draws from everything from literature and social media to self-help culture and ordinary routines. In 2013, she received the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale for Grosse Fatigue.
Her latest exhibition, Paper Planes, at Copenhagen Contemporary is her largest solo presentation in Scandinavia to date. At its heart is a simple idea: a child can look at a sheet of paper and see a bird, a map, a weapon or a plane. Possibility comes before definition. Henrot asks what happens when adulthood gradually teaches us to see only the paper.
Across film, sculpture and installation, familiar objects become ways of questioning the structures around us. Monumental abacuses bend into almost bodily forms, suggesting that even the systems designed to measure and organise life may be less fixed than they appear. Elsewhere, telephones, unanswered emails and restrained animals turn everyday behaviours into subtle reflections on control, care and social expectation.
Rather than simply rejecting rules, Henrot creates small openings within them. Paper Planes feels like an invitation to recover a way of looking that adulthood often edits out: curious, uncertain and willing to imagine another possibility before accepting the one already given.
🔵 Camille Henrot: Paper Planes
📍 Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark
🗓️ 5 June – 31 December 2026
(Image Courtesy of Copenhagen Contemporary)
