VI:DER:VAR brings together three words that form a statement while leaving its subject open. VI names a collective without defining who belongs to it. DER points towards a place and can also function as the relative pronoun “who.” VAR introduces the past tense, placing that collective within time. Read together as “we who were,” the words invite reflection on how individual lives become part of a shared history, and how that history remains present within a landscape.

The granite introduces a different scale of time. Its geological duration meets the changing lives, memories and relationships of a community. Inscribing the words into stone gives a lasting material presence to a statement about people whose time in a place is temporary.

Situated in Bøjden, the work connects these questions to a particular landscape and its inhabitants. The collective suggested by VI remains open to those who came before, those living there now and those who will encounter the work in the future.