Jag ska visa dig hur bergen rör sig under våra fötter när molnen sträcker sig från molntäckets ofiltrerade lätta blick (2024)
Site-specific installation
500 x 500 cm
Museum of Science in Trento, Italy
With this installation, I wanted to highlight the borderland between the personal dimension and the landscape as a functional space for recovery in our urban environments. I have long been fascinated by how the concept of landscape has evolved over time, but also how it shapes the way we view our lives and how we feel about a place. In this work, I reflect on the physical and mental dynamics that are triggered in the encounter between human beings, the home, and nature.
Recent research shows positive signs of wellbeing associated with being in or near nature during illness. Italy was a country that was severely affected during the pandemic, with large parts of society completely shut down. Therefore, with my work at the Science Museum in Trento, I wanted to create an installation that provokes reflection and allows the viewer to encounter a view—an opportunity, through this fictional environment, to access a physical space for recovery in the midst of the exploratory atmosphere of the natural science museum.
I’ve long been fascinated by how we approach nature and the landscape as spectators in our everyday lives—through our homes and windows, facing the wild landscape outside. With this site-specific installation, I wanted to create a stage that combines spatial representation where people and the landscape meet in a fictional reality. The living room, with its carefully selected subtle details, was intended to resemble a traditional domestic space, inviting the visitor to sit on the couch and exist in an in-between state—between nature, landscape, and home.
The installation consisted of walls made of corrugated plastic and steel studs, forming a 25m² square room, combined with a TV showing a video work in which I walk out onto the cliffs in Abisko National Park during the early spring, gazing out at the changing landscape in a pose reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818).
On the opposite side of the room, a small window displayed a photographic work printed on glass, taken from the same location as the video, revealing the backdrop of the film. In this way, our everyday encounter with place and landscape is made visible—we see what lies both in front of and behind us in the surrounding nature.
I wanted the still image and the video, with their different perspectives from the same place, to convey a translation of time, where the movement of the clouds becomes a diary entry about place and human presence in the natural landscape. This testimony can be read as a weather report, but also as a reflection of our desire to feel like a small part of something greater—beyond and outside the expected, in our ever-changing nature. It can be seen as a source of comfort and reassurance in uncertain times, but also as a glimpse into the courage to understand ourselves when the light, filtered through the cloud cover, meets our gaze as we stand before the mountain’s secure embrace.
The work, including the installation, video, and photograph, is now part of the National Mountain Museum “Duca degli Abruzzi,” the contemporary art collection of the Parliament of Turin.
More about the exhibition and texts about the work can be found at:
http://themountaintouch.muse.it/en/entrance.html