The Landscape of Authority
Artist Book & Archival Pigment Prints
2016
Leporello bound / Hardcovered
10 scanned color images / 220 gsm biotop paper
23 x 33 cm
Edition of 25
Over time, the understanding of landscape has undergone a variety of shifts and focuses, both in artistic research and representation. Whether looked at as art historical artefacts, viewed as material for critical research, or valued as artistic impressions they give insight to dominant societal and political attitudes.
Landscapes have revealed to be a powerful medium for narrating the sense and characteristics of national identities. While pictorial representations of national vistas develop a sense of place and unified identity, they also begin to tell the story of one as place more meaningful and valuable, inevitably leading towards a setting where the ‘self’ establishes itself against the ‘other’. Simultaneously, as the dominant narratives and identities develop stronger, others are in danger of disappearing.
The project sets itself against the events of 2014-2015, later to be labelled as the ‘European migration crisis’. The selected images highlight nations benefitting from freedom of movement that is denied to others even in a deep humanitarian crisis. The Landscape of Authority presents landscape representations found from several official passports. By conceptual reframing of the representations, the work calls into questions the authority of its subjects and the individuals subjected to their powers.
The video work made for the same project, The Act of Walking consist of montaged films made around the main road leading to the asylum center of Ter Apel in Groningen, Netherlands and visitors for a well-known Dutch national park celebrated for its visual resembles of the African Sahara.