Carola Grahn

My Name is Nature

Carola Grahn’s contribution to the Ii biennale is a series consisting of three wood signs with hand-carved sentences positioned in relation to the landscape. The blunt sentences bring to mind human relations.

Carola Grahn: My Name is Nature. 2016. Environmental Art Park Ii. Photo: Antti J.Leinonen.

My name is Nature responds to the human desire to connect with nature and be absorbed by the sublime. This work addresses the idea of nature as a single subjective entity that can be conceived as a human possessing consciousness and emotions. Each symbol portrays nature as a quite moody and unwilling lover who feels somewhat used. As Grahn states, perhaps this lover called Nature is not as cheerful and eager to connect to humans as our fantasy might suggest. Her work takes up this theme and critiques civilisation as a whole. We can see it as a comment on modern society’s endless demand for resources. It also points to the discrepancies between our thoughts and actions regarding nature.

Grahn (b. 1982) is of south Sámi descent. She grew up in Jokkmokk and received a master of fine arts from the Royal Institute of Art in 2013. She lives and works in New York. Grahn works primarily with narration in text, photography, installation and sound. Intense emotions, such as contempt, desire and vindictiveness, are often the point of departure in her praxis. Grahn constructs and deconstructs humans’ relations with each other and with nature to understand our given roles and how they relate to individual self-image and influence society. Among other venues, her work has been exhibited at Art Edition 2014 at Hangaram Art Museum of the Seoul Arts Center, South Korea 2014, Passagen Konsthall, Linköping 2015, and SP, Tromsö 2015. She also published the novel Lo & Professorn in 2013.

Gallery

See also

Outi Pieski

Forewalkers is based on the Sámi philosophy of the agreeable life (soabala eallin): preserving, protecting and supporting diversity in both nature and humans. Jenni Laiti and Outi Pieski have made their own borderless fence from walking sticks. In Sápmi, walking sticks traditionally have been used to mark reindeer calves in the bare mountains. Thus, this artwork references praxis which decolonises Sámis’ land by defining its borders. This piece also pays homage to the Sámi ancestors, who wandered before the artists and are their forewalkers. Their legacy is alive in Sámi culture today.

Ingunn Utsi

Ingunn Utsi made her first ‘Gudni’ or ‘Tribute’ work in 1995 in the Ássebákti forest of Karasjok. Her new ‘Gudni II’ or ‘Tribute II,’ which she finished for the biennale, resembles a poem whose lines link Ii and Karasjok. “Two pines stand in a forest far from each other, still connected.” Gudni II is like a family tree whose branches stretch through distance and over generations.

Joar Nango

Joar Nango’s piece represents a different approach to the framework of an environmental-art biennale as it is process based and investigates the tradition of burning tar. At the biennale, traces and documentation of the process, conducted during the preparative workshop in June, can be seen.

Jenni Laiti

Forewalkers is based on the Sámi philosophy of the agreeable life (soabala eallin): preserving, protecting and supporting diversity in both nature and humans. Jenni Laiti and Outi Pieski have made their own borderless fence from walking sticks. In Sápmi, walking sticks traditionally have been used to mark reindeer calves in the bare mountains. Thus, this artwork references praxis which decolonises Sámis’ land by defining its borders. This piece also pays homage to the Sámi ancestors, who wandered before the artists and are their forewalkers. Their legacy is alive in Sámi culture today.

Aage Gaup

In the front of the park, a structure rises from the ground. The contours of a person can be seen in the forest, almost guarding the site. Aage Gaup’s piece is made from the trunks of pine trees, carved into a sculpture. From the material, he awakens vuovdeolmmo.

Tomas Colbengtson

Tomas Colbengtson’s pieces for this biennale are two silkscreen portraits of Sámi people printed on polycarbonate glass. The portraits are placed in nature, with a river as their backdrop. We can see the faces of two women, visualized through patterns taken from old carvings on reindeer antlers. The river passes behind their faces, symbolising the years that have passed and the culture that has vanished.

Matti Aikio

Matti Aikio’s sound installation tells about the present-day situation of the Sámi people in Finland. It turns upside down the Sámi storytelling tradition by presenting a story of the future.