Rest & Routine – Duet for Sanatorium and Modern Hospital

Project type: Exhibition
Location: Nikolaj Kunsthal – PLATFORM
Artist: Cecilie Penney
Curator: Lawrence Ebelle
Year: 2026
Photos: Mads Holm
Collaborators & sponsors: Det Obelske Familie Fond, Københavns Kommune, Rådet for Visuel Kunst, Statens Kunstfond, FAKE Foundation, Dansk Artist Forbund, KODA, The French Institute, Gerflor & Depanneur

Rest and Routine – Duet for Sanatorium and Modern Hospital is an exhibition curated for visual artist and electronic composer Cecilie Penney. The work explores how the architecture of the healthcare system shapes our understanding of care, healing, and human presence.

A humanistic view of architecture
Rest and Routine – Duet for Sanatorium and Modern Hospital takes its point of departure in an encounter between a tuberculosis sanatorium from the early 1900s and a contemporary super hospital. The exhibition may evoke associations with the sanatorium as an architectural and historical typology, where light, colours, materials, and access to nature are conceived as active elements in the healing process reminiscing of Alvar Aalto’s approach at Paimio sanatorium. This humanistic architectural perspective stands in contrast to the modern hospital, where efficiency, technology, and logistics often dominate.

Rest and Routine – Duet for Sanatorium and Modern Hospital is presented as an electronic duet and sound installation. An opera singer gives voice to the sanatorium, while a rhythmic singer represents the super hospital. Processed field recordings and machine sounds are incorporated into an electronic musical composition played in a quadraphonic setup that envelops the audience. Song texts are projected onto the walls as titles inspired by classical opera, guiding the audience through the work’s dialogue between past and present.

Buildings become speaking agents
Rest and Routine – Duet for Sanatorium and Modern Hospital draws clear lines to Cecilie Penney’s previous works, including I have gotten used to speaking in fragments because that is how I receive information (2024) and I don’t understand the words you use (2024). In these works, Penney examines the patient’s experience of the Danish healthcare system through fragmented narratives, sound, text, and animation. Based on conversations, treatment plans, and meetings with therapists, she opens up reflections on illness, alienation, and navigating a system whose language and structures can be experienced as inaccessible.

This thematic concern is continued in Rest and Routine – Duet for Sanatorium and Modern Hospital, where the buildings themselves become speaking agents.

The exhibition space’s floor is covered with CNC-milled linoleum based on a floor plan from a modern super hospital. In this way, architecture is physically drawn into the space as a trace that the audience moves across, underscoring the work’s focus on how spaces affect both body and mind.

Rest and Routine – Duet for Sanatorium and Modern Hospital is made possible thanks to the generous grants from foundations and sponsors. Among others, Det Obelske Familie Fond, Københavns Kommune, Rådet for Visuel Kunst, Statens Kunstfond, FAKE, Dansk Artist Forbund, KODA, The French Institute, Gerflor & Depanneur.