HOUSE OF WILD WOOD WOMAN
A longterm project investigating contemporary wo/man’s perception of Nature and the utopian dream of travelling into the wild.
House of Wild Wood Woman is a homemade home, a refuge for the recluse, a mobile forest cabin and a nomadic museum and gallery, all-in-ONE.
It was created in the summer 2010 and has since functioned as an art based platform for site-specific art projects with a focus on creating dialogue about our perception of nature.
So far, House of Wild Wood woman has been part of projects in the forests of South Sweden (Private View), Ridehuset, Århus, DK (The Pioneer Settlers in the Riding House), Rø Plantage, Bornholm, DK (Bewildered in the Wilderness), Charlottenlund Forest, DK (Face Forest), Gallery Koh-I-Noor, DK (ManyMini Residency), Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore (MacRitchie Me, Turning to be Wildered), and Raadvad Artist Village,DK (Astray).
Watch out! House of Wild Wood Woman is coming to a forest near you soon!
House of Wild Wood Woman is a self-made, octagonal, high-ceilinged tent, which is supported by a wooden branch as the centre pole and attached with strings to the nearby trees.
It has the size of "my personal space" and is made of 100 % cotton. In a way it is the opposite of a practical outdoor tent meant for camping: it is impractical, in process and very much dependent of the local surroundings like trees and forest floor to be complete.
Like Henry Thoreau and Anne la Bastille, I have three chairs in my House, one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
I am a girl with a gun,
but I am not much of a good shot. I load my (plastic)rifle with dreams and rowan berries, and who knows, some day I might harvest my own bullets in a FOREST of fulfilled DREAMS.
The Pioneer Settlers in the Riding House
Nybyggerne i Ridehuset
Group exhibition Ridehuset, Aarhus 2010
The Pioneer Settlers in the Riding House / Nybyggerne i Ridehuset, a group exhibition about being a pioneer and travelling into the wild encompassing visual arts, music, performance and literature.
The participants were assigned a plot of land to settle on. House of Wild Wood Woman represented a more feminine way of being a pioneer, being non-invasive and adapting to the environment.
The project was funded and arranged by Kulturhus Aarhus, Geiger, Litteraturen på Scenen and I Do Art.
Bewildered in the Wilderness
Helt Ør i Plantagen, Rø Plantation, 2011
Wild Wood Woman travelled to Rø Plantation, Bornholm, Denmark to host and guide a special trip in the forest.
Reversing the letters in "Rø", they become "øR", which means bewildered, dazed and confused. The audience were welcomed in the woody VIP lounge by a doormat and two forest attendants handing out entrance stickers. After a short stroll through The Forest of Kisses the trip continued outside the forest trails following a pink thread for approximately 1½ km. Inspired by Troy labyrinths and the name of Rø the trip went round and round, in and out, up and down, crossing and re-crossing in an attempt to find anOTHER way of perceiving the forest. Finally House of Wild Wood Woman hosted an end-of-trip celebration in a delightful little alderwood situated in a glade inside a pine forest.
The project was partly funded and made in collaboration with Danish Nature Agency and NaturBornholm
Face Forest
Charlottenlund Forest, 2011
House of Wild Wood Woman went to Charlottenlund Skov (Charlottenlund Forest) near Copenhagen and temporarily transformed the forest into a Face Forest by drawing faces on tree stumps with charcoal.
The exhibition and the ephemeral nature of the works was partly inspired by the Russian/Korean author Anatolij Kim, who writes poetically in "Otec-Les", ("Father-Forest"): "When a human being dies, it becomes a tree", and "when a tree dies, it becomes a human being". Although this has not to be taken literally, Man and Trees are constituent parts of an eternal cycle and connected physically as well as psychologically - which might be why we tend to project ourselves onto trees.
Wild Wood Woman in Manymini recidency at Galley Koh-I-Noor
Copenhagen, 2012
Many Mini Residency is a short-term residency program operated in conjunction with alternative exhibition venues in Europe and the United States. It is organised by American artists Sarrita Hunn and Ryan Thayer. In January 2012, Many Mini Residency was hosted at Gallery Koh-i-noor, an artist-run independent project space in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The project was funded in part by the Danish Art Council.
"I spent the residency trying to squeeze House of Wild Wood Woman into the project space and make myself a(t) home. The tent is normally put up in the forest, but January was a good opportunity for an outsider to move inside in the warmth for a short while.
However, as the tent was too tall for the project space, I had to tilt the birch pole in order to fit in. I welcomed accidental bypassers to pop in and have a look and a chat. In order to make myself a(t) home, I also took photos of trees from the local area around Koh-i-noor and stuck them on the walls around the tent."