Kirsten Dehlholm

Kirsten Dehlholm (5 April 1945 – 10 July 2024) was a Danish artist and artistic theatre director. She created over 30 presentations combining scenography with performance art, employing a wide variety of techniques, media, and materials.

Biography Born in Vejle, after matriculating from high school, Dehlholm studied textile arts at the Werkkunstschule (Arts and Crafts School) in Krefeld, Germany. She spent the next three years at Kunsthåndværkerskolen in Copenhagen. In 1969, she married the writer Otto Sigvaldi who sold his books from a pram in central Copenhagen dressed in the fanciful costumes she had designed. Some of her works include mirrored images and optical illusions. Her Terra Australia Incognita (National Museum, 1989) inspired by voyages of discovery put the viewer in the unusual position of gaining a bird's eye view of the actors lying below. Her Hvorfor blir det nat, mor? (Why Does it night come mother, Aarhus City Hall, 1989) where the audience was standing on balconies looking down on the white floor where the performers performed. In 2015 she was awarded with the distinguished Artist Award for the Performing Arts (ISPA) as well as the Danish Honorary Reumert Award of the Year.

Dehlholm died on 10 July 2024, at the age of 79.

Awards In 1994, she was awarded the Eckersberg Medal and, in 2013, the Thorvaldsen Medal. In 2015 she was awarded the Reumert prize of honour.