Hanna Ljungh
How to Civilize a Waterfall, 2010
In How to Civilize a Waterfall, the artist performs an authoritative confrontation with a waterfall, as she tries to persuade it to turn into a hydroelectric power plant. The work reveals humanity’s comical and paradoxical relationship with nature. The encounter becomes an emotional and almost spiritual experience – an encounter with one’s self. Wildly shouting and gesticulating, the artist vainly tries to convince a waterfall of the advantages of replacing it with a dam.
Courtesy of the artist and Filmform. Image: Courtesy of Martin Edelsteen.
Biography
Hanna Ljungh (1974, Washington D.C) is an artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. She works with film, photography, sculpture and installation. Ljungh devotes particular attention to the matter we call stone, soil, land, earth, and contemplates notions such as the Anthropocene, the distribution of resources, and what people are ultimately made of. Her work reflects upon and questions the fine line between human and non-human forms of existence and the complex relations and hierarchies between them.
Recently Ljungh’s work has been shown at: Kunsthall Trondheim; Studio Hippolyte and HIAP, Helsinki; The Swedish Cultural Institute, Paris; Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul; Moderna Museet, Malmö. Her work is a part of several private collections and can be found at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
