Jacob Juhl: Imagine a Tree

Jacob Juhl’s Imagine a Tree reflects on the borders between natural and artificial, our relationship with nature, and how it changes over time. The exhibition raises the question of what “nature” means. Is nature just a place where we can go for a walk and then go back home? Is nature a name for everything that is alive? Or is nature also rocks, minerals and chemical processes? What did nature mean 100 years ago? What will it mean in 100 years? Humans are biological beings – does this mean that we can’t do anything that is un-natural?

One of the main questions in the exhibition is how human beings in the future might remember something that used to be called “wild” nature. In the artist’s vision climate change and loss of biodiversity will change the planet so much that future generations will no longer fully recognize what “nature” means today. To illustrate this, Jacob Juhl will transform The Vintti venue into an artificial forest made of broken planks, dead branches, fake roots, plastic leaves, hybrid creatures made of silicone, plastic, marble and more. And you will hear the faint sound of nature, digital bird song or wind in the “trees”. Somewhere you might find a postcard from the future, written by an artificial intelligence, imagining what nature used to be. An essential element in the exhibition is the Vintti venue which, as a wood paneled space, carries strong material references to the forest, even though it was built by humans.
Jacob Juhl

Jacob Juhl is a visual artist and writer, working with photography, robots, installation art and text. He is fueled by an endless fascination with humans as an odd threshold between nature and culture. He investigates contemporary and historic meanings of concepts like “nature”, “life” and “human” and thereby also what we call “artificial“. Apart from exhibitions in his home country of Denmark, his works have been exhibited in Spain, Italy, UK and Germany, among others. Imagine a Tree is his first exhibition in Finland.