SENSING NATURE FROM WITHIN
28.9 2019 – 8.3 2020 MODERNA MUSEET MALMÖ
Curator: Joa Ljungberg
The natural world, from which humanity has so thoroughly distanced itself, no longer exists, at least not in the same way or to the same extent it once did. This realization is starting to dawn on an increasing number of us, including many artists, and has resulted in a growing desire to reconsider old truths and seek out new ways of living and understanding the world. With the exhibition project Sensing Nature from Within, Moderna Museet Malmö wants to offer an artistic and philosophical sounding board for these existential explorations of our time.
In many places around the world today, texts are being written, lectures given, and exhibitions held that in a variety of ways explore man’s complex relationship with the environment in which we live. Criticism has hardened against the logic of a culture that leads to irrevocable destruction and the extinction of species. At the same time, there is a growing interest in more holistic world views and in the fascinating exercise of rethinking our relationships with the more-than-human world.
Moderna Museet Malmö wants to actively contribute to these important reflections and is therefore presenting Sensing Nature from Within during the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020. The project will combine an international art exhibition with an interdisciplinary program of lectures, discussions, and performances.
The seminar series that is part of the program is arranged in collaboration with Lund University Agenda 2030 Graduate School which is a global, cutting-edge research school and collaboration platform for issues related to societal challenges, sustainability and Agenda 2030.
Binary divisions, such as between nature and culture, and man and animal will be challenged in both the exhibition and the program. Intelligence, subjectivity, and emotional life will be explored within as well as beyond the human sphere. In this way, Sensing Nature from Within aims to awaken our sensibility towards the nature that surrounds us at the same time as it constitutes our own inner world.
Sensing Nature from Within is freely inspired by new and old insights into life and matter and reflects aspects of the growing search beyond our exploitative culture, for a new code of ethics.
Participating artists: Ursula Biemann & Paulo Tavares; Cecilia Edefalk; Elisabete Finger & Manuela Eichner; Hans Hammarskiöld; Ingela Ihrman, Anne Duk Hee Jordan; Tuija Lindström, Hanna Ljungh; Hilde Skancke Pedersen; The Otolith Group; Shimabuku; Christine Ödlund.
About the artwork:
Cabinets of curiosities leads the mind to the Renaissance’s collections of exotic objects. Hanna Ljungh’s cabinets however, presents neither stuffed animal heads nor unicorn horns. Instead, they contain metals and minerals extracted for manufacturing batteries, information transfer cables, vehicles and various building elements.
While industrially removed from the mountains, these metals and minerals are also natural building blocks of the human body. Hanna Ljungh’s largest cabinets contain the same amount of iron and copper that the entire population of Kiruna and Gällivare jointly carry in their limbs. Her smaller ones correspond to the levels in an individual.
Curiosity Cabinets: You, me, rock, mountain… thus highlights a relationship between man and mountain. It also sheds light on how practices of quantification and calculation, crucial in industrial operations to achieve maximum efficiency and profit, are increasingly directed at our own bodies. In poorer parts of the world, this rationalisation may involve disciplining the worker’s body. Among the more affluent population, it has become part of a performance-oriented lifestyle. The Quantified Self movement being an extreme example of the latter.
Hanna Ljungh’s newest cabinets contain molybdenum and boron. Some scientists claim that these semi-metals contributed to the emergence of life on earth and that they arrived in meteorites from Mars as life-giving seeds. Their presence in the exhibition invites us to reflect on our long-distance cosmic ties, in a common infinity.