I might be naive but I have hope.
My work testify the struggle between man’s pursuit of growth on one side, and mother nature on the other side. With a camera in my hand and a burning political message in my heart, I try to capture a reality that, is both something so relentless but also mesmerisingly beautiful. In a breathtaking testimony of human and nature, I leave the spectator with the questions of where humanity is heading and whether growth and nature can go hand in hand.
I want to show how we affect nature and the world, but without showing horror stories of plastic-islands or animals filled with plasticbags, plastic-bottles, car-parts and so on. Those stories can be a big inspiration for mine, and seeing it, both makes me sad, but also gives me will-power to help solve the problems we are in, and are facing.
I find big inspiration in the way Mandy Barker shows our trash problems in the world and how she makes the horror mesmerising, and at the same time eye-opening. And I find big inspiration in how she works with sustainability and her collaborations with scientists.
I am trying to find my own place in these horror real-life stories, and I investigate how I can be a part of a society and the system that creates this reality, (since I can’t escape it) but I might be able to help change it. I don’t like to point fingers at others, as I am a part of the system myself. But I am interested in looking at the society and especially my position in the middle of this capitalistic society, and how I with my art can be activistic within that world.
I want to convince people to change the way they live and the way they think. Most people know now that climate change is real, and that it is manmade, but we have to start thinking about what the consequences are. I work around aspects of climate-change, sustainability, plastic use, and the concept reuse, reduce, rethink and recycle. I am trying, through my art to make people aware and reflective about those issues, but without directly telling anyone what to do or how to think, as I’ve experienced that nudging is the best way to get a message across these days in the western world, where people do not like to be told what to do, as we live in an overload of information, and everyone know where to go look for facts.
I also make art that, in a way is fun to be around, and I try to make a place with my art, where people want to stay, art that people want to be around and art that people want to interact with. This interactiveness will hopefully make people think about what surrounds them in the space and it might make them engage in the work and the subject-matters, which will hopefully make them think about their environmental choices.
I want our globe to stay organic, and not turn into a plastic planet. I want to show with symbolism, the effects of hyper-consumerism. I have hope for us, to reflect on our values, the way we live, and the way we think. When looking at my art, I hope that people will be reminded of places and feelings that was undiscovered or hidden away, and thereby create more empathy and sympathy for the world and for each-other. I make art as a way of questioning choices made previously, and as a way of commenting on climate-change and thereby suggesting a social and political change; as I have hope that we together can move towards a better future.
I might be naive but I have hope that we can change together before it all goes to shit.