Maj Hasager is the guest artist of the Gil Society in August.
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My work deals with ideas of power structures, gender, identity, public space, architecture and how these are interlinked and interpreted culturally, spatially and through representation. I use research as a work method and tools taken from the tradition of documentary in order to investigate the line between fiction and reality, questioning the documentary genre’s status as depicting the truth, and how this is and can be constituted in the public.
I consider my artistic approach research based and interdisciplinary working predominantly in text, sound, video and photography. The research is carried out in several stages on a theoretical level, on an empiric level – often taking its point of departure in interviews and collecting material such as “official” documents, personal accounts photographing and as well observing patterns of a place on site. Later all these accounts will be transformed in the creative process, where focus in the investigation of the subjects chosen are to reveal things unsaid or how dislocations and feelings of dissociation, inappropriateness and even alienation can arise when one isolates or focuses on a person or system, and one tries to understand them through the filter of the outsider. Through narrative sequences one can raise questions about the people who appear in the works, and about the viewer’s / listener’s own position as well as dealing with my own position and desire as an artist, both as a part of the work and as an intended reflection of the audience.
My intention is to continue a writing process dealing with construction of history in relation to landscape during my stay in Iceland. I will use the experiences of this residency to built up narratives that reflects places and situations elsewhere from a distance. Also through showing the video work To Whom It May Concern in an Icelandic context at Gallery Populus Tremula, which takes it point of departure in the land of Palestine and Israel, to reflect how landscapes are used as political narratives and means of control - not only through the images produced, but also in terms of the interpretation of site.
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Maj Hasager
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Íslensk þýðing kemur síðar.
