Hannah Dokken

 

 

Artist statement

 

Through sculptures, object collages, photography and text, I aim to point at structures and constructions that we humans make with, and in, nature. My concerns relate to: How nature is collected, categorized, used and ascribed different values, both practical and affectional, and how we collaborate with nature. Seamlessly intergrated in everyday life, nature may be seen to be even more intresting when the relationship between nature and the everyday gets out of hand. This is affected when we ascribe nature properties it does not have.

Of intrest in my investigations is how images and representations of nature both enable us to get closer, but at the same time create a gap betwen us and that, through whole sets of structures that exist to understand something that just is. Becoming more aware of nature as knowledge created by humans, through our human centered language and communication, I wonder if our understanding of nature is limited by the understanding of ourselves. How we talk about nature is determined by what we think, and want, and not by what we actually know. This forces me to reconsider, keep questioning, and to seek the moments when this gap become visible.

Through collecting, assembling and applying values myself, and by borrowing methods of representation, I try to highlight, or even refine such structures. I am concerned with resources and different values applied to different materials, such as the sentimental and economical. By exploring this I adress, conceive of and suggest a way of looking.

Essentially, I am aiming to create an ambivalence, between the delicate, romantic, pragmatic and brutal, in the same manner by which I often experience the ways that we approach the compelexities of the natural.