With the special exhibition In the light of North Africa Willumsens Museum shows selected works from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco by modern Danish artists. From Theodor Philipsen's short trip to Tunis in 1882 to JF Willumsen's longer stay in Tunis in 1914 and Oran in 1931-1932 to Ejler Bille and Agnete Therkildsen's visit to Marrakech in 1952 and 1962, the exhibition covers a period of 80 years, during which armed and bloody struggles for independence also took place in all three countries.

North Africa at that time was French territory, with Tunisia and Morocco as French protectorates from 1881-1956 and 1912-1956 respectively, and Algeria as a French colony from 1830-1962. With France's colonization of the North African region, the infrastructure, especially in the big cities, was expanded and the areas were easier to travel to. Several French artists traveled to North Africa to work, which may have inspired the Danish artists to leave.

For the same reason, it is also natural to ask whether the Danish artists in some ways adopted the French view of the region? Whether the Danish artists were in reality a kind of “Frenchmen in the second generation”, and whether their works fully or partially reflect a French mentality in the approach to the populations, architecture, nature and wildlife? Or did the Danish artists form their own views of the region? Several of the Danish artists had artistic connections to France, some lived there permanently, and for this reason these questions deserve to be examined.

What did the Danish artists paint while they were in North Africa? Did they paint North Africa? The answer is not clear. Some reproduced what they saw in quick sketches, while others used the encounter with the areas as a springboard and inspiration for their own artistic investigations of, for example, colors, lines and surfaces. However, the paintings and sculptures of the Danes in the exhibition largely reflect a “filtered” North Africa, a North Africa shown and interpreted through Western artistic styles. A North Africa that also reflects a more general fascination in Europe at the time with the Arabic-speaking world and the notion of the exotic and foreign.

The exhibition is organized over four rooms. Two rooms are specifically dedicated to Willumsen's work from Tunis and Oran, while a third shows selected works by Willumsen and his Danish colleagues. In addition, there is a reflection room, where archive material, documents, films and tourist brochures are unfolded to shed historical light on North Africa at the time and to place the Danish artists' stay in a societal perspective.

The exhibition is curated by art historian Johan Zimsen Kristiansen in collaboration with Willumsens Museum.