Cathrine Raben Davidsen on PARSIFAL.
Three-panel folding screen - painting, object and architecture in one.
Cathrine Raben Davidsen's practice has always moved across categories - painting, drawing, ceramics, textiles, set and costume design for the Royal Danish Ballet, collectible objects through Nilufar Gallery and The Future Perfect. The connecting thread is transformation: how images carry meaning across time, and how matter records its own history.
For Project Materia 2026 she contributes PARSIFAL - a three-panel folding screen in Matek, joined with custom steel hinges, working simultaneously as painting, object and architecture.
In the artist's words
Parsifal 01 is a folding screen composed of collaged Matek panels connected with custom steel hinges, moving between painting, object and architecture - functioning both as image and spatial divider.
The screen is made from Matek, Mater's circular material produced from waste streams including coffee shell waste, sawdust and recycled e-waste plastic. It has a dense, tactile quality - somewhere between stone, terrazzo and industrial composite - while still carrying traces of its organic origins. I am interested in this tension between the manufactured and the deeply physical: industrial yet almost archaeological in appearance.
Working directly with the Matek panels allows the surface to operate simultaneously as image and object. The material already contains a fragmented history of transformation, which becomes central to the logic of collage, layering and the folding structure. The custom steel hinges emphasise its architectural quality and allow the work to continuously shift in space - opening, closing, concealing and revealing.
The title references Parsifal from medieval mythology and opera - the wandering seeker moving between worlds in search of meaning or transformation. I am interested in the folding screen as a threshold object: something that both conceals and reveals, producing shifting perspectives as the viewer moves around it.
The piece
Medium: Matek™, steel · Dimensions: L124 × W2 × H160 cm · three-panel folding screen (variable dimensions) · Edition: Limited edition · 18 + 3 AP
PARSIFAL is produced in a limited edition of 18 + 3 AP. Variable in its open dimensions, the screen is presented within the 2026 cohort exhibition and travels with Project Materia through the year.
