Artist statement, 2011
My artistic practice explores the representation of nature. More specifically, I'm interested in nature in the everyday sphere, as something close to me, personal, something ordinary and mundane, rather than something dramatic, distant or wild. Working in photography, the moving image, installation and objects, I try to imagine and visualize ways of representing nature, using approaches that sometimes imitate or refer to scientific methods, but sometimes inventing her own methods. Often obsessively and closely observing a specific subject or material, my way of looking is close-up, for a prolonged period of time. The pre-cinematic concept of animation, as in bringing life to the dead, also informs a lot of my practice, and manifests itself in both still and moving works.
I am particularly interested in ways of collecting, ordering and classifying nature as 'objects' or images, both in scientific and cultural contexts. Collecting has become an increasingly important part of my own working method; both as a way for me to gather raw material for work and to organize the way I see the world around me. Through ordering and presenting the collected material I try to create new meanings or suggest possible scenarios, often in a playful and suggestive way. I usually collect nature that I find close to me, in the urban or domestic environment; common insects (like flies or bumblebees) that have died on the window sill or on the pavement, faded household plants that have been thrown out on the street, or pieces of plastic that look like insect wings. This domestic-ness, or everyday-ness, is an important element of my work; showing the dull, the overlooked and discarded, rather than the spectacular or colourful.
Behind these interests lies a deeper concern for the vulnerability of nature and the ‘nature deficit disorder', an alienation from nature, which is so symptomatic of the contemporary human; nature is conceived of as something external, as an object or place outside our own realm. Through my artistic practice I try to question my own position in relation to nature, but also attitudes and representations of nature present in contemporary society.