Galerie Mikael Andersen is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by Danica Dakic in Denmark. This exhibition presents film and photographic works from the artist’s project El Dorado (2006–2007) realized for the documenta 12 in Kassel.

El Dorado – utopian dream and undiscovered paradise – is the legendary gilded destination of many a fateful expedition in pursuit of unbounded wealth. An eponymous panoramic wallpaper from 1848, exhibited in Kassel's German Museum of Wallpaper, provides the backdrop for stories recounted by teenagers. They project themselves into its deserted landscape: they dance, they sing, they fight, they run, they speak of escape and expulsion, of trust and the will to live, of hopes and fears. Their enthusiasm resembles a prospector's speculative fever in the face of the wall-paper's pristine gardens of the world, populating its surfaces with narratives of the search for self, of courage and beauty.

Recordings for El Dorado were produced in collaboration with young people from the Hephata home for unaccompanied minor refugees, the Schlachthof youth centre, and the Carl-Schomburg-Schule's dance class in Kassel.

The exhibition at Galerie Mikael Andersen presents a projected film, supplemented by a group portrait in a light box, and a series of photographic portraits of the actors of the film.

Danica Dakic (b. 1962 in Sarajevo, lives in Duesseldorf) investigates in her work the interfaces of political, cultural and personal identity. Using a variety of media (photography, film, video and sound installations), she interrogates the construction of identity and belonging that results from the impacts of social change, globalization, and war, on the basis of her own experience of emigration.

Danica Dakic has already exhibited at numerous solo and group exhibitions including:

HereThereEverywhere, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, USA (2008); documenta 12, Kassel, Germany (2007); 40yearsvideoart.de, K21 Duesseldorf, Kunsthalle Bremen, ZKM Karlsruhe, Städtische Galerie im Lehnbachhaus, Munich, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany (2006); MACBA Collection, MACBA, Barcelona, Spain (2006); Be What You Want but Stay Where You Are, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Holland (2005); Die Regierung. Paradiesische Handlungsräume, Secession, Vienna, Austria (2005); How Do We Want to Be Governed? (Figure and Ground), MAC, Miami, USA (2004); 8th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2003); a cappella, National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (2003); 2nd Valencia Biennial, Valencia, Spain (2003); Home, SCCA, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (2002); Ich ist etwas Anderes, Kunstsammlung NRW, Duesseldorf, Germany (2000); After the Wall, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (1999–2001).