CC: SNAFU by Mikael Colville

​Collectors' Collective is an unconventional, community-driven art space and membership club in the heart of Copenhagen that's shaking up the traditional gallery scene, making it easy for art lovers to connect with talent.

Mikael Colville-Andersen is a Danish urbanist, author, filmmaker, photographer and television host whose work has long explored cities, human behaviour and everyday life. Before his international career in urbanism, he had a successful period as an exhibiting artist from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s.

​In 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion, Colville-Andersen went to Ukraine to volunteer his skills as an urbanist and support Ukrainian cities and communities. He did not go to Ukraine to make art. Art appeared back in his life when he least expected it, but when he needed it the most.

​Living and working in Kyiv during the war, repeated missile strikes and the realities of everyday wartime life led to anxiety disorder and PTSD. He began sketching almost involuntarily, as a way of processing what was happening around him.

​Those sketches gradually developed into paintings, assemblages and other works, eventually leading to two exhibitions in Kyiv.

​SNAFU: Ukrainian Stories grew directly from those experiences. The works are connected to people Colville-Andersen met, things they said, situations he witnessed and moments that stayed with him. They are personal stories from life in Ukraine, filtered through memory, humour, fear, exhaustion and the absurdity of trying to maintain an ordinary life while missiles are falling on the city around you.

​The title comes from the military acronym “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up,” a phrase that captures the strange normalization of the profoundly abnormal.

​Exhibition is open until 18th October. Reach out to Collectors' Collective for a visit on other times: Collectors' Collective