> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.catapult-platform.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # When Language Recedes, Architecture Remains - URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/olivia-rode-hvass-at-museet-for-samtidskunst/ - Published: 2026-05-18T04:05:03.000Z - Updated: 2026-05-18T04:05:02.000Z - Description: Olivia Rode Hvass's floating reed house at Skt. Hans Psychiatry, Roskilde, part of the nomadic Museet for Samtidskunst. A foam cocoon, a monument to care, built to be burned. - Author: Dominique Catherina Foertig - Tags: Exhibition ## Olivia Rode Hvass and Museet for Samtidskunst Presents *She Listens but She Can't Speak* in Kurhuset, Roskilde [**Museet for Samtidskunst**](https://samtidskunst.dk/en/?ref=catapult-platform.art) presents *She listens but she can't speak* by [**Olivia Rode Hvass**](https://www.catapult-platform.art/olivia-rode-hvass-danish-promising-emerging-contemporary-artist/) at **Skt. Hans, Roskilde.** ![Olivia Rode Hvass, She listens but she can't speak, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde — reed house floating on the still lake, framed by bare winter branches, the historic Kurhuset building visible in the background.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/05/olivia-rode-hvass-she-listens-reed-house-lake-kurhuset-mfs-roskilde.webp) ****Olivia Rode Hvass** **:** *She listens but she can't speak*, 2025, reed, building foam, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde. Photo: David Stjernholm. Courtesy Museet for Samtidskunst. ![Olivia Rode Hvass, She listens but she can't speak, detail, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde — building-foam cocoon suspended inside the reed house, its bumped and hollowed surface visible through the dark doorway opening, dried reed flowers hanging above.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/05/olivia-rode-hvass-she-listens-cocoon-interior-doorway-mfs-roskilde.webp) ****Olivia Rode Hvass** **:** *She listens but she can't speak* (detail), 2025, building foam, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde. Photo: Nicola Helin. Courtesy Museet for Samtidskunst. When the words run out, other forms of holding take over. Drawing, touch, and the accumulated gesture of building something by hand carry what language, when it fails, cannot. There is a long history of structures made not to last, made instead to mark. --- **She listens but she can't speak** **Artist:** Olivia Rode Hvass **Exhibition:** She listens but she can't speak **Venue:** [ Museet for Samtidskunst ](https://www.mfs.dk/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **City:** Roskilde, Denmark **Photography:** David Stjernholm, Nicola Helin **Image Courtesy:** Courtesy Museet for Samtidskunst --- The question of what an artwork can do for a person who cannot see it has no clean answer. But the impulse behind it, to make a visible form out of an invisible act of care, describes something particular about what sculpture, at its most unguarded, sometimes manages. > *The most honest structures are built for someone who may never enter them. Their purpose is to hold the weight of a wish that has nowhere else to go.* *She listens but she can't speak* is sited on the lake at Skt. Hans, the closed grounds of a former psychiatric hospital in Roskilde, where Museet for Samtidskunst, a nomadic museum without fixed walls, currently resides. The work floats. Touched by wind and water**.** As the only piece in the exhibition visible around the clock, it does not require an opening time or a gallery threshold; it is simply present, the way worry is. ![Olivia Rode Hvass, She listens but she can't speak, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde — the reed house stands in the flooded shallows; the foam cocoon glows cream-yellow through the open arched entrance, native reeds clustered at the base.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/05/olivia-rode-hvass-she-listens-house-cocoon-door-lake-mfs-roskilde.webp) ****Olivia Rode Hvass** **:** *She listens but she can't speak*, 2025, reed, building foam, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde. Photo: Nicola Helin. Courtesy Museet for Samtidskunst. ![Olivia Rode Hvass, She listens but she can't speak, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde — wide view across native reed beds; the reed house sits within the winter landscape under an open sky.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/05/olivia-rode-hvass-she-listens-landscape-reed-beds-mfs-roskilde.webp) ****Olivia Rode Hvass** **:** *She listens but she can't speak*, 2025, reed, building foam, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde. Photo: David Stjernholm. Courtesy Museet for Samtidskunst. The structure is a small reed house, its walls built from the same reeds that grow at the lake’s edge. Inside, visible through the window and the door, a yellow cocoon made of building foam, the material that sits behind walls in every constructed space, pressed between boards and insulation, ordinarily invisible. Here it is exposed and held. Rode Hvass drew the cocoon first, a shelter sketched on paper during a hospital visit for a friend who had lost the use of speech. The sculpture is the drawing made physical, brought out onto the water. [Olivia Rode Hvass: From “Sticks On Fire” To “Burn The World” - Spotlight On A Danish Contemporary ArtistDiscover The World Of Olivia Rode Hvass, (She/Her, They/Them) A Copenhagen-Based Artist Blending Textile, Drawing, And Sculpture With Storytelling. Explore Captivating Exhibitions And Unique Art That Weaves Together Myth, Tradition, And Modernity![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/icon/catapult-20.png)Catapult ContemporaryDominique Catherina Foertig![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/thumbnail/Olivia-Rode-Hvass--the-very-best-in-contemporary-art-from-denmark-copenhagen-now-on-view-5.webp)](https://www.catapult-platform.art/olivia-rode-hvass-danish-promising-emerging-contemporary-artist/) Olivia Rode Hvass - Catapult Contemporary The choice of reed is not incidental. It is one of the few building materials that does not decay in standing water. It has been used for thatched roofs across Denmark, for reed boats in South America, and for the floating islands of the Ma'dan people in Iraq. The house carries this compressed history of building in difficulty while anticipating a future in which flooding will determine what can and cannot be built. It is a structure with no fixed shore. ![Olivia Rode Hvass, She listens but she can't speak, construction detail, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde — close-up of the reed roof ridge in backlight; dried flower heads cascade downward, thatching bound with rope at the seam](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/05/olivia-rode-hvass-she-listens-window-reed-flowers-mfs-roskilde.webp) ****Olivia Rode Hvass** **:** *She listens but she can't speak* (detail), 2025, reed, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde. Photo: David Stjernholm. Courtesy Museet for Samtidskunst. ![Olivia Rode Hvass, She listens but she can't speak, detail, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde — dried reed flower heads hang in dense clusters across the black wooden window frame, partially veiling the dark interior.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/05/Photographer-Nicola-Helin_Z6A6299-copy.webp) ****Olivia Rode Hvass** **:** *She listens but she can't speak* (detail), 2025, reed, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde. Photo: David Stjernholm. Courtesy Museet for Samtidskunst. **Olivia Rode Hvass** plans to burn the work after the exhibition closes. That the work should end in fire feels right. Not as destruction but as transformation. Care, in the terms this sculpture suggests**,** is not a permanent condition. It is something that transforms. The cocoon will not always be a cocoon. The house will not always be on the water. ![Olivia Rode Hvass, She listens but she can't speak, detail, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde — extreme close-up of the building-foam cocoon surface; pitted circular depressions and flowing ridge formations in warm amber light.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/05/olivia-rode-hvass-she-listens-cocoon-surface-texture-mfs-roskilde.webp) ****Olivia Rode Hvass** **:** *She listens but she can't speak* (detail), 2025, building foam, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde. Photo: Nicola Helin. Courtesy Museet for Samtidskunst. ![Olivia Rode Hvass, She listens but she can't speak, detail, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde — lower section of the building-foam cocoon in warm amber light; the organic pitted surface tapers above a wooden floor, reed walls in the background.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/05/olivia-rode-hvass-she-listens-cocoon-base-warm-light-mfs-roskilde.webp) ****Olivia Rode Hvass** **:** *She listens but she can't speak* (detail), 2025, building foam, installation view, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde. Photo: Nicola Helin. Courtesy Museet for Samtidskunst. Not all Alices have an Olivia. That sentence, which closes the artist’s own text, describes the dedication the work carries and the social critique embedded in it. Rode Hvass’s practice has consistently returned to the conditions that make care difficult, loneliness, individualism, and the costs borne by those who fall outside the pace of the ordinary. This work extends that preoccupation into something quieter and more exposed. It sits on the lake and waits. --- [**Museet for Samtidskunst on Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/museet%5Ffor%5Fsamtidskunst/?ref=catapult-platform.art) [**Olivia Rode Hvass on Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/luxusmusklen/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **About Catapult** This is a exhibition review published by Catapult — an independent editorial platform for contemporary art, based in Vienna. We publish exhibition reviews, artist features, interviews, and critical context, with a focus on emerging and mid-career practices from Europe and beyond. [catapult.art](https://www.catapult-platform.art/) Want to be featured? [Submit your work →](https://www.catapult-platform.art/submit/) ---