Are We There Yet?

Group Exhibition at Nils Stærk, 2022

Are we there yet? was one of the most googled questions in 2021. It's a trivial yet ambiguous statement about how far we still are from our destination – as individuals and as a species. From the macro perspective the question has an existential dimension which sums up our impatient approach to the present and the future as destination. With its open and, at the same time, questioning phrasing the exhibition title thus establishes a reflective framework for the works which are all based on modified everyday objects that cut across geographical barriers. Whether it be a song, software or flora, the works are cultural reworkings of existing symbols of nature – and thus undergo a marked semiotic transformation. Each artist uses a particular material to question the man-made climatic conditions under which we live. Alarming questions about the ecological consequences that are difficult to put into words; questions that are both rhetorical and sceptical at the same time. The works in the exhibition thus move like turbulence in the air between prediction and reality. Have we already entered the Eremocene epoch – ‘the Age of Loneliness’ as described by the American biologist E.O. Wilson – or are we on our way?

The exhibition brings together seven artistic positions and spans painting, drawing, sound, sculpture, installation and text with works by Andreas Albrectsen (1986, DK/BR), Allora & Calzadilla (1974, US/1971, CU), Paul Fägerskiöld (1986, SE), Ceal Floyer (1968, UK), Jone Kvie (1976, NO), Eau Pernice (1989, DK) and Maša Tomšič (1986, SLO)