Two screens placed in the ground create the illusion of adjoining chambers linked by a narrow opening. In one space, a woman struggles with a green robe; in the other, a man does the same. Unable to see each other, yet sensing the other’s presence, they pull against one another—sometimes brutally, sometimes tenderly. Their tug of war embodies envy’s dual nature: isolating and binding, destructive and sustaining. The enclosed and grave-like setting reflects envy’s suffocating force, yet also its paradoxical capacity to connect. The viewer alone perceives the full entanglement, witnessing envy both as a tightening rope and an invisible bond that ties us together.

Katja Bjørn’s The Pleasure of Envy and Envy My Beloved are part of The Seven Deadly Sins, a series of exhibitions created in collaboration with Aarhus 2017 – European Capital of Culture. Both works explore envy as a force, which through its nagging indefinability, inward pain and intense gestures, shapes and strains our relationships with others, including friends and family.