Fastelavn.
Collaborative exhibition.
Edinburgh College of Art.
25th Febuary 2020.
Collaborative shrovetide
exhibition and performance
by Maria Cecilie Wrang-Rasmussen and Fríða Katrín Bessadóttir.
In February 2020, I put together a group exhibition with Icelandic exchange student Fríða
Katrín Bessadóttir, celebrating the Nordic traditions of Shovetide, Fastelavn in Danish,
Öskudagur in Icelandic. Re-appropri- ating our own traditions, Frida and I each picked our
favourite memories of the holiday and incorporated them into a communal celebration and
exhibition.
The centre point being the candy filled barrel, a Danish tradition, which historically
contained a living cat, and the ceremonial “beating the cat off the barrel” was a way to
banish evil spirits and bad luck. In todays’ celebrations this has now been replaced with
sweets and playful cat imagery for decoration.
For our celebration, we celebrated the cats and placed them safely on the wall. Our banishing
of evil was replaced with the banishing of negativity, inviting participants to decorate the
barrel with the challenges they face and want to overcome. In a collaborative performance we
“hit the shit off the barrel”, creating new forms of celebration and togetherness, by our own
design.
