On the occasion of a one-day installation event June 24, 2026
Curatorial Studio Inquiry into Space as Method
Anatomy Galaxy was an anatomy learning environment at the University of Southern Denmark. It includes a former anatomy wet specimen self-study space and, next to it, a large room named Galaxy.
Throughout the past half year, I have worked with this site, developing a site-specific inquiry into epistemic environments and curatorial studio practice. Although the anatomy learning environment is no longer in use, it still carries traces of earlier teaching practices: ventilation infrastructure, old signs and marks from the heavy containers that once held anatomical specimens.
The inquiry uses this space as a studio and explores how environments participate in the emergence of knowing.
Installation of ‘Spiral’ in Anatomy Galaxy Curatorial Studio, SDU Odense, June 2025. (Images: Michael Shanks)
Space as Method
Anatomy Galaxy explores how mediators—garments, images, objects and spaces—shape experience and participate in knowledge making.
The Anatomy Galaxy project connects to my broader research practice, which explores how environments shape experience, learning and knowing. It experiments with open-ended ways of researching to generate insight into the formation of knowledge and experience across studios, exhibitions and learning environments.
The project proposes the curatorial studio as a way of working with space as method. Environments, materials, bodies and images become active participants in the inquiry. The studio becomes a temporary potential space for experimentation, reflection and creative inquiry.
Epistemic Environments
The inquiry gradually distinguishes between two different epistemic environments: Anatomy as a standardized environment for knowing, and Galaxy as a more open and emergent environment for exploration and imagination.
Artistic Practice and Curatorial Practice
Anatomy Galaxy forms part of an ongoing artistic inquiry exploring installation, video and site-responsive interventions. Through these practices, I investigate how environments, bodies and mediating forms participate in shared situations of experience and knowing.
Images from the opening and closing of Anatomy Galaxy showing participants and respondents. (Images: Connie Svabo and Gitte Miller Balslev)
Exhibits
Descriptions of exhibits found below.
Images of the exhibits that were installed for the one-day opening and closing of Anatomy Galaxy (Images: Connie Svabo)
Descriptions
Galaxy Dress and regular body dress. The Galaxy Dress has a key role in the Anatomy Galaxy Curatorial Studio Inquiry. The dress became a way of unfolding the spiraling inquiry. It created a mobile experience architecture and holding environment. It was unpacked and worn at a video shoot that resulted in video footage and stills. This video work is still in process. In the inquiry, clothing emerges as a first architecture: a mediating layer between body and environment.
Anatomical Body in Galaxy Dress, layered and projected. Video still. The projected image brings together anatomy, garment and environment into a layered visual composition. The image emerged through experimentation with projection, bodily performance and the Galaxy Dress as a mediating layer between body and environment.
Galaxy Process. Three Moleskine journals document the inquiry process, including found images, sketches of encountered anatomical specimens, and analytical text. Remains of past use, rescued from the floor after sweeping. These scraps of plastic show the careful attention to past artefacts and practices that are part of the inquiry into the epistemic environment.
Anatomy Expert. Unedited, uncut audio interview with Associate Professor Annette Møller Dall, sharing the story of the former anatomy wet specimen self-study environment and the practices that once unfolded here.
Anatomy Process. Modeled clay versions of a human torso and a human foetus I saw at the new wet specimen anatomy area at the Winsløw Center at the new SDU / OUH facilities – to where the specimens were moved. The figures emerged through a process of materially translating the encounter with anatomical bodies into another form.
Spiral. A large-scale spiraling paper snake, installed for the opening and closing of Anatomy Galaxy at SDU on June 24, 2026. The spiral appears through the curatorial studio inquiry as a way of describing knowing as dynamic, open-ended and emergent. The inquiry takes place through repeated returns to the site. It does not develop according to a plan. The spiral summarizes the emergent epistemic environment of Galaxy. In the curatorial studio inquiry and resultant epistemic environments, the spiral is contrasted with standardized, more tightly choreographed and sequenced knowledge processes. Anatomy represents this kind of epistemic environment in this inquiry. Spiral installed with assistance from Christina Lauritzen.
The Name Anatomy Galaxy. The curatorial studio inquiry got its name from the LED display right outside the two main rooms. The display reads “Anatomi Galaxy” – a combination of the Danish word for anatomy and the English word Galaxy. Nobody has been able to tell where the name comes from. I find the name poetic in its scope and scale – spanning from the anatomical body to the cosmos.
Event Program
Anatomy Galaxy
Opening and Closing Event
June 24 2026
University of Southern Denmark
Former Anatomy Wet Specimen Space
Program
Exhibition viewing
Connie Svabo: Anatomy Galaxy Curatorial Studio Inquiry into Space as Method
Response: Eva Sophia Meyers on potential space, reverie and Jungian symbolization
Response: Katrine Bergkvist Borch on body, skin, cloth
Response: Maiken Westen Holm Svendsen on galaxy
Response: Michael Shanks on spiraling inquiry
A bit to eat and drink, reception style.
Anatomy Galaxy is part of my ongoing higher doctorate research into environment, mediation and experience, and was also developed as an MA thesis in Curating.