Universal Blindness

Universal Blindness explores a type of blindness that not only makes us question our own identity, but also affects our perception of the world and how it appears. 

The work incorporates braille and gold leaf on concrete blocks as a tactile meditation on perception and the unseen. The blocks appear familiar, as architectural reminiscences from previous empires, and at the same time as blocks of knowledge, outside time and space. 

The work emerged from the statement "I cannot see myself", which surfaced while Mille Kalsmose was under hypnosis. Not only in a physiological sense, as Kalsmose entered an altered state of mind, but also from a philosophical or even spiritual point of view. If you cannot see yourself, the task of discovering who you are becomes both demanding and meticulous. You dig your way through years of material, unravelling your identity in the same way that an archeologist excavates the past or a scholar interprets a poem. This type of blindness challenges both our sense of self and our perception of the world. 

Universal Blindness was made alongside the works on paper with braille and golden leaf called Golden Blindness.

Perhaps the Golden Blindness was what the alchemists were aiming at in their search of turning led into gold.