SEATTLE, WA.- Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg: A Place of Opportunity and Transformation opened at the
National Nordic Museum this weekend. The Museum presents the cutting-edge work of celebrated Swedish artists from August 3rd to October 27th. Immersive installations of sculpture, sound, and video clay animation are included in the artists’ first museum exhibition on the West Coast in over a decade.
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
Djurberg and Berg’s collaborative works convey psychological states and common life experiences by using anthropomorphic objects as metaphors. Visitors will be invited to step inside a large-scale immersive installation titled The Stone Garden (2023), a cold and inhospitable environment, yet one that supports plant life. Colorful flowers bloom from boulders and branches. Elsewhere in the exhibition are ovoid and spherical sculptures of eggs and moons. These objects resemble people with facial features and limbs. The sculptures assemble as a cast of actors portraying human characteristics in stop-motion animation films that are screened in the exhibition space.
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
“Djurberg and Berg’s acclaimed work has been exhibited widely around the globe and recognized by some of the world’s most distinguished contemporary art institutions,” said Chief Curator, Leslie Anne Anderson. “We are thrilled to present their unique, thought-provoking work to Seattle, a community of art enthusiasts.”
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
Djurberg creates sculptures and films to explore fantasies and fears, personal secrets and universal truths. She has selected stop-motion animation to express ideas that are otherwise inexplicable. She sculpts each figure, builds the stage sets, and films the clay animations herself in a labor-intensive process. Over the course of their twenty-year collaboration, Berg has composed complementary soundscapes for the animations. The three short films on view are Dark Side of the Moon (2017), A Pancake Moon (2022), and Howling at the Moon (2022), contemporary fairy tales set in an ominous forest with a curious cast of characters.
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
Dark Side of the Moon was previewed this past weekend at the Seattle Art Fair, which welcomed thousandss of visitors.
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
Djurberg and Berg made their first-ever visit to Seattle for a conversation with Anderson on August 3rd, during the exhibition’s opening weekend. Visitors will also be able to engage with the exhibition through complementary concerts and artmaking. On September 25th, Chilean-Swedish music producer and DJ Cristian Dinamarca will bring his dembow and baile-funk sound to Seattle, and on October 26th, multitalented artist and DJ Berg will return to perform music against a backdrop of Djurberg’s animations. A partnership with Ballard Clay will encourage participants to become inspired by the duo’s mixed media sculptures on September 29th.
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
The exhibition’s tongue-in-cheek title, A Place of Opportunity and Transformation references the films’ setting, a fantastical forest in which the narratives’ protagonists resist and fall victim to opportunistic predators on their journey or search in vain for answers to life’s great mysteries.
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
A Place of Opportunity and Transformation was organized by the National Nordic Museum’s Chief Curator Leslie Anne Anderson, in collaboration with the artists. In recent years, the Museum has evolved into a global leader in exhibitions, becoming a content producer, not just a content presenter. Last year, Anderson commissioned a new work of art from global rockstar, Jónsi (Jón Þór Birgisson). His immersive art experience, FLÓÐ, debuted at the National Nordic Museum as his first ever exhibition at a U.S. museum. It received much fanfare in Seattle and is currently on view at the Reykjavik Art Museum in Iceland. After A Place of Opportunity and Transformation, Jónsi will return to the Museum with his sisters Inga, Sigurrós, and Lilja with the world premiere of their immersive art exhibition, Fischersund: Faux Flora.
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
These forward-thinking exhibitions bring both new works of art and scholarship on existing works of art to the world, offering visitors new expressions of history and insight into contemporary Nordic culture to people of all ages and backgrounds. Multi-layered programming complements and enhances each exhibition, creating connections, generating dialogue, and inspiring new perspectives and ideas.
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
About the Artists:
Nathalie Djurberg was born in 1978 in Lysekil, Sweden. She studied art at Folkuniversitetet and Hovedskous Art School in Gothenburg, Sweden before earning her MFA from Malmö Art Academy in 2002. Hans Berg was born in 1978 in Rättvik, Sweden and is a self-taught musician, who began playing the drums at age fourteen. Djurberg and Berg met in Berlin in 2004 and have been working together ever since.
The artists’ collaborations have been exhibited around the world. In 2009, Djurberg and Berg presented their installation The Experiment at the 53rd Venice Biennial "Making Worlds" curated by Daniel Birnbaum where they were awarded the Silver Lion for Best Emerging Artists.
Installation view. Photo: Jim Bennett/Photo Bakery for National Nordic Museum.
Support and Sponsorship:
A Place of Opportunity and Transformation is made possible with generous support from the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation and the Eldon Nysether Exhibition Endowment with additional support from ArtsFund, ArtsWA, Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and 4Culture
About the Curator
Leslie Anne Anderson is Chief Curator of the National Nordic Museum, a Seattle Arts Commissioner, and Chair of the City’s Public Art Advisory Committee. She has been an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellow and a Fulbright scholar at the University of Copenhagen. Anderson has organized over twenty exhibitions, including the celebrated collection reinstallation American and Regional Art: Mythmaking and Truth-Telling at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and she was the commissioning curator of Jónsi: FLÓÐ and organizer and co-curator of the traveling exhibition, Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century for the National Nordic Museum. She has received the international Association of Art Museum Curators Award for Excellence in Exhibition, the Utah Museums Association Award for Excellence, and the University of Florida’s “40 Gators Under 40” honor.
About the National Nordic Museum
The National Nordic Museum is the only museum in the United States that showcases the impact and influence of Nordic values and innovation in contemporary society and tells the story of 12,000 years of Nordic history and culture, across all five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) as well as three autonomous regions (Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Åland) and the cultural region of Sápmi.
Awarded a national designation by an Act of Congress in 2019, the Museum shares Nordic culture with people of all ages and backgrounds through exhibitions, a collection of 80,000 objects, unique educational and cultural experiences, and by serving as a community gathering place.
For more information, visit:
www.nordicmuseum.org.
