Wolwedans Foundation - From the Invisible to the Visible - April 2022

During my two week-long residency with the Wolwedans Foundaton in Namibia I worked on the project ‘From the Invisible to the Visible’, using materiality of plastic, the four natural elements, performativity and photography. This body of work is in perfect alignment with the values and the aesthetics of the Foundation’s Arid Eden Project, which seeks to establish an entirely sustainable community for Wolwedans.

Since I started working with plastic, I look at the distinction of nature and culture differently. I see it from the point of view of an in progress historical and social crisis, in which nature and plastic waste have fused at both the planetary and microbiological scale. This forces us to consider both the duality and opposition between nature and culture differently.

In the images, plastic becomes the interpreter between all these elements, moving between them, allowing new ideas and extending our senses into the boundaries between humanity and non-human nature – animals, plants, landscape, sky, geology, air – to become appreciable in a lyrical and provocative way. The goal is to ask us all to consider how we are in dialogue with nature in an era of global environmental crisis.

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With thanks to Stefan Horn, Initiator and Co-ordinator of the artist residency | Stephan Brückner, Captain of Wolwedans | Jacques Junius, Food & Beverage Manager Wolwedans | Cecilijah Nghidengwa, Happiness Coordinator and Co-creative consultant | Filippus Hamunyela, Production Facilitator | Laetta Stuchtey, Coordinator and logistic of overall concept | Whitney Heroldt, Secretarial and Communicaton. I would also like to thank you to writer Jean McNeil for her unique input.