Semester 2- Week One
Nathalie Djurberg's 'Claymations'.
Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg's intricately constructed claymation films are both terrifyingly
disturbing and artlessly sweet.
disturbing and artlessly sweet.
The new works created for the Venice Biennale explore a surrealistic Garden of Eden in which all that is natural goes awry.
She exposes the innate fear of what is not understood and confronts viewers with the complexity of emotions.
Nathalie Djurberg was awarded the silver lion for a promising young artist at the Venice
Art Biennale 09.
(http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/6886/nathalie-djurberg)
Research Djurberg's work in order to answer the following questions;
1. What do you understand by the word 'claymation'?
(Claymation is the generalized term for clay animation, a form of stop animation using clay. The term claymation was coined by its creator, Will Vinton, owner of an animation studio that worked with clay artists to create clay animation).
2. What is meant by the term 'surrealistic Garden of Eden'? and 'all that is natural goes awry'?
After googling 'Garden of Eden - Nathalie Djurberg' and seeing pictures of her artworks I found it quite intriguing and it made me think of alice and wonderland..or something else that is sort of 'made up'. Think it's the use of colors and the way that they are inlarge and not actualy flower size that has made me think that way. As for 'all that is natural goes awry' - I was thinking when looking at the photos of her exhibition that the lighting in the room that she used was very dark, which created her flower works to cast shadows on the floor making the room have a bit of a spooky feel to the room and because of the size of the works it could be quite scary almost. So that could be why 'all that is natural goes awry'.
3. What are the 'complexity of emotions' that Djurberg confronts us with?
There are a whole lot of emotions involved in Djurberg's work. At first you think that it is sweet and nice and then you see that Djurberg has also wanted us to see a different side to the flowers and 'sweet' videos, this side being 'terrifyingly disturbing'.
4. How does Djurberg play with the ideas of children's stories, and innocence in some of her work?
Djurberg's uses child like figures in her works which shows the idea of innocent children, innocently playing. But Djurberg also plays innocent with not so innocent which creates the complexity of emotions in her work too.
5. There is a current fascination by some designers with turning the innocent and sweet into something disturbing. Why do you think this has come about?
I think that designers these days do not always want to create something 'pretty' and 'nice' and much a people don't admit it, we like to see things that disturb us...this is the kind of stuff which leaves the long lasting impression.
6. In your opinion, why do you think Djurberg's work is so interesting that it was chosen for the Venice Biennale?
I find Djurberg's work extremely interesting. I think it was chosen for the Venice Biennale because of the way Djurberg combines two very different media's (film and clay modelling) and also plays 'sweet' on 'bad' and by doing this Djurberg creates a fascinating, terrifying, weird and beautiful jungle, which shouldn't - but does work.
references.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-claymation.htm
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/6886/nathalie-djurberg-experiment-at-venice-art-biennale-09.html
http://pudri.blogspot.com/2009/10/la-biennale-di-venezia-2009-nathalie.html
