LANDSCAPE CAMOUFLAGE — NATURAL FASHION

In the triptych Bewinged Martial Explorer I–III and Natural Fashion – Explorer No. 1, I work with the self-portrait format, depicting myself as an explorer and questioning how humans can exist within, connect to, approach, and explore nature today, reflecting a longing for a simpler life, closely connected to the natural world.
The self-portraits are all situated in Amager Fælled, the last protected natural site in Copenhagen, which is currently under threat due to new urban planning strategies. In Natural Fashion – Explorer No. 1, site-specific plants from Amager Fælled are used in dialogue with the natural fashion of the Suri tribe from the Omo Valley in southwestern Ethiopia.
The Suri use their skin as a surface for artistic expression, decorating their bodies with natural pigments made from powdered volcanic rock—such as red ochre, green copper ore, white kaolin, and powdered limestone—and creating elaborate headwear from flowers, fruits, leaves, grasses, shells, feathers, and animal horns. Similarly, I wear a head bouquet of natural plants from Amager Fælled, including quaking grass, cynosures, fernleaf dropwort, and Inula salicina. These arrangements can be understood as natural fashion, where the body becomes a canvas in relation to the environment, but also as a form of camouflage, echoing how both humans and animals use appearance strategically to inhabit, protect, and survive within their environments—like animals blending into a landscape, or the use of camouflage in human contexts such as the military.
The third work, Landscape Camouflage – Moose-Hunter, reinforces this idea of camouflage as both a survival strategy and an aesthetic plot, and shows my ongoing interest in exploring the concept of the natural and the interrelations between species. In this piece, the moose and the deer are mirrored in each other, not as identical forms, but as a kind of natural echo—a camouflage symphony. All works are large-format, creating a sense of embodiment and inviting the viewer to inhabit the physical and conceptual space of the images.

 
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