The Sixth Day

The consumption of Nature is at the heart of the project, on both material and visual levels. Thus the landscape is shaped not only according to a utilitarian function, but serves equally according as a visual and aesthetic commodity. The work is built upon behavioral traits that underline an indirect exertion of control that might not be perceptible on the surface, but that operate nonetheless in exploitative, controlling, and subjugating manners.

Split into three sub-parts, the work delves into how we conceive and imagine the natural as a conjured and phantasmagorical image, deprived of its textures and its living being. It is an ideal that is observed from a distance, contemplated, and imagined, but not truly experienced. It then explores the ways we collectively manipulate and shape the landscape, an interaction predisposed to a human desire for control and consumerism. In the third part, the line between the personal space and the natural environment is blurred, where dabbling with elements brought in from forests on one hand is met with intrusive and boundary-challenging overlaps.

Instead of bleak and accusing photographs, the viewer is invited into a poetic internalized world of deceleration and contemplation. The result is an entanglement between man-made and collected, harmony and dissonance, conviviality and conquest.

"the sixth day" was developed during a three-month residency with the Sustainable Mountain Art Programme by FDDM (Fondation pour le développement durable des régions de montagne) in Switzerland

this work was developed during an artist residency in Switzerland in 2019 with SMArt Programme and ArtBellwald. 

The work was exhibited in Bellwald, Switzerland