Vestiges of the Unearthed opnar þann 15. júní// Vestiges of the Unearthed opens on the 15th of June
Artist:
Victoria Ahrens
Kannski invites you to ‘Vestiges of the Unearthed’, the first exhibition of Victoria Ahrens’ expanded-photographic work in Reykjavik, Iceland.
The image-objects in the exhibition are shaped bythe pigments of abandoned industrial sites, and our encounter with photography in situ; yellow, pink and orange from the rock pigments of the South West coasts of the UK; greens and blues from the copper fields of the Atacama desert, purples and pinks from the sublimation of pyrite from the post-industrial landscapes of CUF in Barreiro, Portugal.
These three locations are where the tangible remains of our often hidden violent extractivist history reside, as well as the unspoken colonial and gendered landscapes of industry. These particular stone-bound metals are used in the photographic process, aluminum for polaroid strips, lithium to power our computers and phones, copper for the plates exposed to create the images in Ahrens’ displays.
Among the tinted works are photographs of the few succulents and plants that still grow in these highly toxic environments, offering a sense of potential, even hope, amid the revelations of what our images record and cost. The works remind us of our hand in shaping both our world, and our view of it in the silent, saturated and queer space of landscape, amid the ruins of our time.
Gallery Kannski
Reykjavik, Iceland
15.06.24-23.06.24
Pv: 15th June
…………………
The spectral and the still meet on the surface of the image,
as I journey by land, walking in the heat of the sun,
over mountains, coastlines and flatlands
Walking as an acitivity of the mind,
thinking about the activity on the land
It reminds me of the heat on the Altiplano,
where the lithium fields colour the landscapes of salt and flamingos
Here, I look up to the volcanoes
and imagine the flight of the condor
I look down at my feet, salt crackling under foot, sharp
Am I wearing the right clothes?
I’m burning as I take my photographs
Aware that this place is merciless in the midday sun
And that the caput mortum is a little toxic in my hand
I pick up the rocks, and take them back to the studio
I am sweaty and feel the need to sit in a quiet place
while I figure out how to combine these images
Frottaging the surface of the image, I find my way to the edges
I leave my DNA on the surface, my fingerprints all but visible
Here is where we meet, earth, rock, image and me.
Vestiges, remains, residue, traces of our deep encounters
Imagined combinations that hypnotise and give me solace.
Vestiges of the Unearthed
Vestiges of the Unearthed maps our relationship to the disappearing or reshaping of the landscape through anthropocentric interventions and fragmented Extractivist histories.
Made in situ in a partially abandoned industrial site in Portugal, these photographs draw on histories of the Iberian Pyrite belt, the Jurassic coast, and the Altiplano of the Andes.
These images offer a fragmented view of places of abandon and histories of extraction, tinged with the caput mortum of the left-over residues of the mining industry.
From mountains, flatlands, coastlines to waterfalls, they speak of disappearing cartographies, of boundaries, margins and the graveyard of the industrial revolution, while embodying the solace of a cyclical, hypnotic return to the earth.
Using coloured filters, made with collected rock pigments, the collaged film stills knit together these disparate places to create a single view.
A journey across land and water, only to find the ruins of our human intervention tinted with a reddish pink pellicule on these weathered relics of other times
Only shrubs and ground palms thrive in the heat of the sun, and the dry scorched earth.
Victoria Ahrens 