Soil
5 JunE 2021 – 26 september 2021
During summer, Havremagasinet is filled with art. We have opened all the floors that have been closed during winter and we even have an art installation in our front yard. The artworks concern man’s relationship to earth in the sense that it is the primary condition for our existence. Humanity has, to say the least, a complicated relationship to land/earth/soil. We need and exploit it while simultaneously sabotaging it and thereby destroying an essential prerequisite for our survival. In the exhibitions, we see cultivation of plants, preparations for the apocalypse, reflections on our relationship to earth and nature, the struggle to protect nature as well as the effort to ransack and destroy it in pursue of short term economic gains. The garden equally represents the nurturing of, as well as the struggle with nature – a struggle against weeds, pests and wild growth. We impose human rules and notions of order on nature to force it to serve our ideals regarding productivity and beauty. Cultivated land, whether it is a park, garden, farm or planted forest, is a paradox. It is a human construction violating and transcending human order because it has a life of its own growing in accordance to rules beyond our comprehension. It is not quite natural since he have ordered and systematized it in to categories created by us according our perceptions of its values, and it is not quite a creation of man. It contains an independent essence outside of our control.
We can follow this struggle throughout history since it was created by us through the invention of self-awareness – this strange notion that we are of nature and in nature but that we ourselves do not constitute nature. This emancipation or perhaps alienation has generated unwanted consequences. In our eagerness to rule nature and maximize its usefulness, we are critically damaging the ecological systems keeping us alive. We might perceive these consequences as Nature’s revenge, which we respond to with new interferences and smart solutions. But nature lacks that kind of agency. It is indifferent towards us and it is in fact our own reflection we struggle against. Right now it appears as if the mirror image has the upper hand. Perhaps there is another way for man to live on earth, not as a superimposed gardener, rather as one in a million other natural beings.
More information can be found in the Folder
Participating artists
Anna Linder is born and raised in Storuman in Sweden’s interior. Linder is a gender non-binary artist, curator and cultural producer. Their primary work is within the field of motion picture. Their videos and installations have been on display at Moderna Muséet in Stockholm, ICA in London, The Swedish institute in Paris, Borås Art Museum, Göteborgs Konsthall, Södertälje Konsthall and Gallery Alkatraz in Ljubljana. Linders films have been shown at Rotterdam International Film Festival, Tribecca Film Festival, Arsenal Experimental in Berlin, Oberhausen Film Festival and Edinburgh Film Festival. They also participated as a mentor in the project Lesbisk Odyssé, organized by Lesbisk Makt, a popular art movement based in Västerbotten.
Carolina Caycedo is a London-born Colombian multidisciplinary artist known for her performances, video, artist’s books, sculptures and installations that examine environmental and social issues. She participates in movements of territorial resistance, solidarity economies, and housing as a human right. She has held residencies at the DAAD in Berlin and The Huntington Libraries, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens; received funding from Creative Capital and Prince Claus Fund among others; Has participated in the Chicago Architecture, Sao Paulo, Venice, Berlin, and Whitney Biennials. Recent solo shows include Care Report at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź; Wanaawna, Rio Hondo and Other Spirits in Orange County Museum of Art; Cosmoatarrayas at ICA Boston; and From the Bottom of the River at MCA Chicago. In 2020 Caycedo was the Wanlass Artist in Residence at Occidental College and she is one of the selected artists for the upcoming 23rd Sydney Biennial. She is a member of the Los Angeles Tenants Union and the Rios Vivos Colombia Social Movement.
Ilona Huss Walin is a visual artist based in Gothenburg. She has worked with video, installation and performance for over 20 years, with multiple exhibitions mainly in Scandinavia. For the past seven years she has approached nature and environmental issues with her art. An important part of her work at present is to create in collaboration with others. She is educated at the Bergen Academy of the Arts, and Valand Academy of Fine Arts and Film in Gothenburg. For more info: www.ilonahusswalin.com. For this exhibition, the artist collaborated with Ambjörn Göransson, a filmmaker and musician from Gothenburg, and Martin Jentzen, a forest engineer.
Linda Tedsdotter, born in Laisvall, is a visual artist currently based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Since 1998, her works have been shown in museums, festivals, and galleries. Tedsdotter’s artworks are often site-specific or in other ways related to the situation and the context they form part of. As a response to the times we are living, her artworks are created not to be discarded after a short period of display, instead they are made sustainable, or ready to be repurposed, in her effort to minimize her ecological footprint. Tedsdotter also works as an independent curator and is an active member at Konstepidemin Art Center in Gothenburg. Tedsdotter have been a board member of the artist-run gallery Box, the art magazine Paletten, and Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg.
Ursula Biemanns work is grounded in a research-based practice. She creates video essays and texts that address the interconnection of politics and the environment across local, global, and planetary contexts. Based in Zürich, Switzerland her research involves fieldwork in remote locations from Greenland to Amazonia, where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil and water. Her latest field research took her to the South of Colombia where she is involved in the co-creation of an indigenous University for biocultural knowledge generation. Her video installations are exhibited worldwide in museums and international Art Biennials. She had numerous solo exhibitions e.g. at Helmhaus Zurich, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein n.b.k. and her retrospective Indigenous Knowledge Cosmological Fictions in 2020 at the Museum of Modern Art in Nice, France. Biemann is a founding member of the collaborative art and media project World of Matter on global resource extraction and circulation. She has published several books and the 2021 online monograph Becoming Earth, covers her ecological video works. Biemann has a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program (1988), both in New York. She received a doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University Umeå, as well as the Swiss Grand Award for Art-Prix Meret Oppenheim and the Prix Thun for Art and Ethics.
Konstnärer tolkar AP-fonderna (Artists interpret the AP funds) is a group consisting of climate activists Anna Bokström and Johanna Norrbo, who have worked together in the international network Fossil Free. In 2020, they decided to invite artists to address the issues. The ten participating artists are Nina Bacos, Anna Bokström, Ann Engqvist, Sara Graner, Max Gustavsson, Ilona Huss Walin, John Huntington, Lena Ignestam, Babwale Obayanju and Ella Tilleman.
Trädfittorna (The Tree Cnts) is an artist group consisting of Anna Linder, Eila Wall Boholm, Elin Rytiniemi, Sanna Wiggefors, and Ylva Helena Låndahl.
