Bond, 2023, aluminum, stainless steel, 189 × 153 × 107 cm, Lower Lifeforms, Horsens Art Museum, (Photo: Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen)
Bond, 2023, aluminum, stainless steel, 189 × 153 × 107 cm, Lower Lifeforms, Horsens Art Museum, (Photo: Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen)
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Pla¥, 2020 bronze, ⌀150 x d4,5 cm. ARKEN Museum of Modern Art 2022 (Photo: Frida Gregersen)
A gigantic bronze coin stands upright, pressed into the grass and soil – as if a giant had had the coin in its hand, and tried to stick it into the earth in a stupid attempt to give nature back its minerals – or as if the earth itself was a slot machine.
The work touches upon different anthropogenic issues, such as the conversion of natural resources into profit, which won’t be able to be exchanged, as well as a societal and technological development whose only global concord seems to be growth.
The front of the coin presents a sort of tree of life or fertility goddess with her head surrounded by different kinds of wildlife. Its erotic appearance reflects the comprehensive force of attraction in kingdom of plants and animals, as well as a human desire in the guise of a naked female body.
Unlike the heteronormative view on gender and sexuality dominating most of society, wild nature makes up an endlessly broad spectrum for sex, gender, reproduction and symbiotic relationships, like the hermaphroditism of snails and plants, or the co-existence across different species such as lichen, which is a mix between fungi and algae.
Pla¥, 2020 bronze, ⌀150 x d4,5 cm. ARKEN Museum of Modern Art 2022 (Photo: Frida Gregersen)
The back of the coin presents some kind of trickster – a dancing jellyfish with four eyes. According to the theory of The Rise of Slime (Jeremy Jackson, 2008), in the future, as a consequence of oxygen depletion, climate change, overfishing and pollution, it will only be the most primitive organisms, like jellyfish, algae and bacteria, who will be capable of living in the oceans.
The extinction of the diverse marine life, that has emerged through many millions of years of evolution, will have fatal consequences for the life on earth, which is so deeply dependent of – and symbiotically connected with – the ecosystems of the sea.
Thus, the two-parted shape of the work contains different narratives. On one side, it contemplates being viewed in the shadow of human actions. On the other side, it can be viewed as a kind of tree of life, in a mythological as well as a biological sense. Furthermore, the coin appeals to something semiotically incorporated in modern human beings – a sort of archetypical symbol of wealth, luck, or growth, to which the opportunistic part of consciousness is automatically drawn. Like that, the coin in its gigantic shape can be seen as a materialization of human desire, and a symbolic redistribution of this vital force, down into the earth and out in the planetary.
Pla¥ has been realized with support from: The Danish Arts Foundation and Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond