Cultural Nature (Human Nature)
by Josephine Fenge Birk Nielsen
Using the camera as a tool to examine the world, Swedish artist Jonna Hägg creates visual art, which should be experienced with all your senses. Her practice is a critical exploration of the human shaped culture and the way in which it affects our perception of our natural habitat. Have the structures of culture become more natural to the human than nature itself?
Jonna Hägg seeks to explore how a consensus around nature is established; declaring that man is guilty of tremendous changes to our planet. In her videos, she uses reality as a motif of mimic abstraction as a way to enter the essence of nature.
The video work 5000 – 100 (2016) is a repeated film sequence going from high to normal speed repeatedly. Starting out as a psychedelic madness, it slowly reveals a close-up of a water surface affected by human hands, while a quick thundering rhythm slowly transforms into a recognizable sound from the physical world – a light breeze. As such, Jonna Hägg creates a narrative about the man as a force of nature and a potential risk to the ecosystem of the planet.
Jonna Hägg points out the limitations of the human eye and ear by making it impossible to properly decode the images and sounds at first, and then slowly revealing more details. The work can be seen as a commentary on the incredible speed that characterizes the world we live in – a world, which is marked by an unending stream of information and where it almost seems impossible to create order in the chaotic noise that surrounds us. Jonna Hägg reminds us to open our eyes and sense the world, not least the nature around us.
CV
Jonna Hägg (b. 1989)
Education
Graduated from Oslo Photo Art School in 2013
Currently studying at Malmö Art Academy, at Lund University in Malmö
Selected Exhibitions
2016 Projection, Rendezvous curators, Aarhus
2016 annual exhibition, Malmö art academy, Malmö
2015 no end filmfestival, cinemateket, Bergen
2013 departure exhibition, ofks – Galleri IKM, Oslo