The Sixth Day

2019

This project considers our regarding of nature as something consumable, both materially and visually. The landscape is shaped not only according to a utilitarian function, but serves equally 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 parts, “the sixth day” delves first into how we conceive, imagine, and consume the natural realm as a conjured and phantasmagorical image, deprived of its multitudes of layers only to perceive what’s on the surface. 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. By dabbling with elements brought indoors from forest hikes, the project treads the threshold between the endearing and inoffensive and the intrusive and boundary-challenging. How do we familiarize ourselves with our surroundings?

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.