The Earth Beneath Our Feet

Artists

Mathias Svold, Ulrik Hasemann, Christina Capetillo

Press release

The exhibition The Earth Beneath Our Feet brings together works by Christina Capetillo, one of Denmark's most influential visual artists within landscape photography, and Mathias Svold and Ulrik Hasemann, award-winning photographers who, over several years, together created the works Kystland (Coastal Land) (2019) and Gennem Øjetræet (Through the Eye Tree) (2023). 

For many years, Capetillo, Svold, and Hasemann have, each in their own way, tried to capture the essence of Danish present-day landscapes and nature, and their works are a reminder that nature and the landscape often turn out to be constructions influenced and shaped by human hands and culture. In this exhibition, their works will be shown together and, through different perspectives and mutual interplay, will examine present-day landscapes and human imprints on the Danish landscape.

The exhibition seeks to illustrate how landscapes are full of imprints and stories, forming a kind of living archive providing new perspectives on the interplay between humanity and nature. The works will unfold stories from different geographical locations around Denmark and inspire viewers to reflect on views on humanity and nature.

In addition to nuancing the interrelationship of nature and humanity via their mutual interplay, the works will also touch on topics such as regeneration and the Anthropocene, which refers to a condition where the relationship between nature and culture has fundamentally changed so that human footprints on Earth are now greater than those occurring naturally.

The exhibition title is both a concrete reference to the soil beneath our human feet and a more symbolic reference to the inevitable interdependent, transitory, and cyclical relationship between humanity and nature. Moreover, the title also embodies responsibility, ownership, and the human footprint on Earth, inviting questions and reflection on what we hand on now and into the future: how are we shaped by the landscape, and how does humanity shape the landscape, and what are the implications of this for the Earth beneath our feet in the future?

The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and Augustinus Fonden.