CC Hennix

Malmö Konsthall presents an exhibition showcasing the visual and sound art of Catherine Christer Hennix. While Hennix is best known as a musician and composer of long-form drone compositions, her creative practice extended far beyond music, engaging significant artistic and intellectual conversations of the 20th century.

Pioneer of minimalism

Spanning her early work series, the presentation includes elements from her installations, sculptures, works on paper and sound pieces. While Hennix remained a fairly obscure figure for much of her life, a late interest in her work has revealed an incredible body that will contribute to expanding the discourse around minimalism, in both music and visual art, as well as conversation around spirituality, mathematics and gender identity.

Born in Stockholm, Catherine Christer Hennix (1948–2023) was immersed in music from an early age, playing drums and was an early member of Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), where she composed for mainframe computers while studying biochemistry, linguistics, and mathematical logic.

International influences

A 1968 trip to New York introduced her to the downtown art scene and key figures like John Cage and Walter De Maria, but her 1969 encounter with La Monte Young proved most influential. Young connected her with the master of Hindustani raga, Pandit Pran Nath, whose teachings shaped her deep engagement with Hindustani classical music, and Henry Flynt, a lifelong collaborator. She stayed for a long time in New York, later moved to Amsterdam and Berlin, and until her passing, she resided in Istanbul.

Formative presentation at Moderna Museet

Hennix’s first major exhibition, Topos and Adjoints, took place at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in 1976, showcasing a collection of steel sculptures, sine waves compositions, projections, and an accompanying text Notes on Topos and Adjoints. Alongside the formative exhibition, which influenced many of her later works, she performed her compositions, along with those of La Monte Young and Terry Riley, during Brouwer’s Lattice, a multi-day festival she co-organized with curator Ulf Linde.

Travelling to Germany

The exhibition at Malmö Konsthall is the first major presentation in Sweden of her artistic practice since the 1976 show at Moderna Museet, offering an overview of her entire body of work. Some of Hennix’s works were previously shown at Malmö Konsthall in the exhibition Åke Hodell – Resistance, 2022. The exhibition is a collaboration with The Estate of Cathrine Christer Hennix, overseen by Lawrence Kumpf, a longtime collaborator with Hennix and Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, Germany, which will present the exhibition following Malmö Konsthall.