att uppleva konst hemifrån
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Sara Nielsen Bonde
on display from June 7-16, 2020
open on weekends from 12pm to 5pm and during the week from 1pm to 6pm
The exhibition shows Sara Nielsen Bonde's work in a very site-specific context. To create the best possible dialogue between the works and the surrounding environment, the exhibition takes place in a private garden on Lidingö.
The following event will take place as part of the project:
Let`s talk about wood
June 11, 2020 6.30pm
Find more information here
We find ourselves at home. This has always been a place to rest, to spend time with our loved ones, to enjoy our spare time. Suddenly, this has become a place in which we are called upon to work, to study, to teach, and above all to protect ourselves and our fellow friends and colleagues from a serious disease. In contrast, public life - especially cultural life - has become almost entirely absent in its original form. Many exhibition spaces and showrooms stay closed - at least physically. Many projects are now realized online and in new formats. Intuitions try to broadcast events and content digitally or virtually.
Interestingly enough, we consume art at home every day in a variety of ways. We are exhibiting art in our living rooms, in our kitchens, in our bedrooms. Living with art is rather the norm, than the exception. A well-known example is Carl Milles, whose art collection and residence can be visited in Millesgården. However, we are usually not opening our homes to visitors. But exactly this is what the curator is doing with this exhibition asking the following intriguing questions:
- How does our perception of home change, when we are now suddenly spending more time in our own space?
- How does our perception of art change, when we are asked to refrain from visiting exhibitions?
- How does our perception of both, art and our home, change when we exhibit art at home, live with it for a while, and open our home to visitors?
The works of art that are exhibited here were created by the artist Sara Nielsen Bonde. She plays with expectations of our surroundings and encourages us to redefine the conditions and characteristics of the materials that seem so familiar to us. Bonde wants us to feel that her works come back to their original environment. At the center of her work is the tree's bark, which is essential for the living tree. This is, where the tree’s energy transport takes place. At the same time, she makes us more attentive by using different materials, but always directs our attention back to the tree - even without wood. Even though we hardly see any wood in the sculptures, the artist has used it for each work, mostly as a casting template.
Using wood seems an obvious choice, but this is not necessarily true. While walking through Djurgården, we may have noticed that some trees there are filled with concrete. In the past, this technique was considered a measure to stabilize old trees whose inner life had partially died off - this seemed possible because the tree only needs the bark to continue living. Today, however, it is known that this technique deprives the tree of flexibility and also creates a hollow space between the tree and the concrete in which mold can grow. In her work Bonde takes up this technique and alludes to how we change and work with the tree - the wood - in our surroundings. But even when the tree is felled, and thus appears dead to us, we process it. We use it in architecture, or build furniture from it, thereby changing the material and helping it taking on a second life. Bonde gives the environment and the materials in her works a voice of their own.
Sara Nielsen Bonde (b. 1992 Denmark) is an artist whose works centers around the dialogue between her mostly sculptural artworks and the environment. She graduated from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in the spring of 2019. In the same year she received the Fredrik Roos Art Grant and exhibited at the konsthall Artipelag in the Stockholm archipelago. Today the artist lives and works in Gothenburg, where this year, she was part of the exhibition Echo Scenery in the artist-run gallery Box. She also participated in the exhibition Landship and Ownerscape at the Bergen-based studio collective project room ISOTOP FELLESATELIER, as well as in the exhibition project Tyst vår, which took place in April in the Stockholm forest around Kaknästornet, near Djurgården.
Sara Nielsen Bonde Bark Outside In (2019) Photo Ola Andréasson
Sara Nielsen Bonde Bronze Bark (2017) Photo Ola Andréasson
Sara Nielsen Bonde Inside, Outside, Bark and Concrete (2018) Photo Ola Andréasson
Sara Nielsen Bonde Transparent Filling (2018) Photo Ola Andréasson
Sara Nielsen Bonde Transparent Bark (2020) Photo Ola Andréasson
Sara Nielsen Bonde Wood Bricks (2017) Photo Ola Andréasson
This project is supported by Stockholm University as part of my degree in Curating Art (Department for Culture and Aesthetics).