Video and print series. 2013.
Landscapes
C-prints, VHS video
I am inspired by manufactured environments. This work is an attempt to create this kind of reality--a reality based on contradictions and falseness.
Images both shape and mirror our relation to the world. The aim of creating new images is to critically analyze representations of “nature” in visual media. The focus is on representations which are based on entertainment and pop culture aesthetics and also originate from my own memories and experiences. In my work, I hope to explore and question these relationships. What kind of animals, people and landscapes are represented, how, and within which narratives? Where have I placed these things in my own narrative? What kind of categorization, inclusion and exclusion do the images do? What does it mean to have our relationships to animals mediated by representations?
In recent theory representations of nature often have been critiqued for conveying “the white man’s gaze”, i.e. that it always has been the western anthropologist, scientist, photographer or filmmaker who has defined and framed to “them” – the Other – while the camera doesn’t show any traces of the white men themselves. Can the concepts of stereotyping and prejudices also be applied to species and entities other than human?
I want to create objects that are only allegedly related to their origins. With their nearly-clear images, the subject of the structure is exposed. But ultimately these images of nature are distorted, their function is deferred and contorted. What had firmly established itself in our visual understanding of a certain type of “natural image” is suddenly reduced to absurdity, reversed, warped, and travestied.
